LOVE

                           BY THE AUTHOR OF
                   “ELIZABETH AND HER GERMAN GARDEN”


                      MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
                      ST. MARTIN’S STREET, LONDON
                                 1925


                               COPYRIGHT


                       PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN




PART I




I


The first time they met, though they didn’t know it, for they were
unconscious of each other, was at <i>The Immortal Hour</i>, then playing to
almost empty houses away at King’s Cross; but they both went so often,
and the audience at that time was so conspicuous because there was so
little of it and so much room to put it in, that quite soon people who
went frequently got to know each other by sight, and felt friendly and
inclined to nod and smile, and this happened too to Christopher and
Catherine.

She first became aware of him on the evening of her fifth visit, when
she heard two people talking just behind her before the curtain went up,
and one said, sounding proud, ‘This is my eleventh time’; and the other
answered carelessly, ‘This is my thirty-secondth’--upon which the first
one exclaimed, ‘Oh, I <i>say</i>!’ with much the sound of a pricked balloon
wailing itself flat, and she couldn’t resist turning her face, lit up
with interest and amusement, to look. Thus she saw Christopher
consciously for the first time, and he saw her.

After that they noticed each other’s presence for three more
performances, and then, when it was her ninth and his thirty-sixth--for
the enthusiasts of <i>The Immortal Hour</i> kept jealous count of their
visits--and they found themselves sitting in the same row with only
twelve empty seats between them, he moved up six nearer to her when the
curtain went down between the two scenes of the first act, and when it
went down at the end of the first act, after that love scene which
invariably roused the small band of the faithful to a kind of mystic
frenzy of delight, he moved up the other six and sat down boldly beside
her.

She smiled at him, a friendly and welcoming smile.

‘It’s so beautiful,’ he said apologetically, as if this explained his
coming over to her.

‘Perfectly beautiful,’ she said; and added, ‘This is my ninth time.’

And he said, ‘This is my thirty-sixth.’

And she said, ‘I know.’

And he said, ‘How do you know?’

And she said, ‘Because I heard you tell someone when it was your
thirty-secondth, and I’ve been counting since.’

So they made friends, and Christopher thought he had never seen anybody
with such a sweet way of smiling, or heard anybody with such a funny
little coo of a voice.

She was little altogether; a little thing, in a little hat which she
never had to take off because hardly ever was there anybody behind her,
and, anyhow, even in a big hat she was not of the size that obstructs
views. Always the same hat; never a different one, or different clothes.
Although the clothes were pretty, very pretty, he somehow felt, perhaps
because they were never different, that she wasn’t very well off; and he
also somehow felt she was older than he was--just a little older,
nothing at all to matter; and presently he began somehow also to feel
that she was married.

The night he got this feeling he was surprised how much he disliked it.
What was happening to him? Was he falling in love? And he didn’t even
know her name. It was the night of her fourteenth visit and his
forty-eighth--for since they had made friends he went oftener than ever
in the hope of seeing her, and the very programme young women looked at
him as though they had known him all their lives--that this cold feeling
first filtered into his warm and comfortable heart, and nipped its
comfort; and it wasn’t that he had seen a wedding ring, for she never
took off her absurd, small gloves--it was something indescribably not a
girl about her.

He tried to pin it down into words, but he couldn’t; it remained
indescribable. And whether it had to do with the lines of her figure,
which were rounder than most girls’ figures in these flat days, or with
the things she said, for the life of him he couldn’t tell. Perhaps it
was her composure, her air of settled safety, of being able to make
friends with any number of strange young men, pick them up and leave
them, exactly when and how she chose.

Still, it might not be true. She was always alone. Sooner or later, if
there were husbands they appeared. No husband of a wife so sweet would
let her come out at night like this by herself, he thought. Yes, he
probably was mistaken. He didn’t know much about women. Up to this he
had only had highly unsatisfactory, rough and tumble relations with
them, and he couldn’t compare. And though he and she had now sat
together several times, they had talked entirely about <i>The Immortal
Hour</i>--they were both so very enthusiastic--and its music, and its
singers, and Celtic legends generally, and at the end she always smiled
the smile that enchanted him, and nodded and slipped away, so that they
had never really got any further than the first night.

‘Look here,’ he said, or rather blurted, the next time he saw her
there--he now went as a matter of course to sit next to her--‘you might
tell me your name. Mine’s Monckton. Christopher Monckton.’

‘But of course,’ she said. ‘Mine is Cumfrit.’

Cumfrit? He thought it a funny little name; but somehow like her.

‘Just’--he held his breath--‘Cumfrit?’

She laughed. ‘Oh, there’s Catherine as well,’ she said.

‘I like that. It’s pretty. They’re sweet and pretty, said together.
They’re--well, extraordinarily like you.’

She laughed again. ‘But they’re not both like me,’ she said. ‘I owe the
Cumfrit part to George.’

‘To George?’ he faltered.

‘He provided the Cumfrit. All I did was the Catherine bit.’

‘Then--you’re married?’

‘Isn’t everybody?’

‘Good God, no,’ he cried. ‘It’s a disgusting thing to be. It’s hateful.
It’s ridiculous. Tying oneself up to somebody for good and all.
Everybody! I should think not. <i>I’m</i> not.’

‘Oh, but you’re too young,’ she said, amused.

‘Too young? And what about you?’

She looked at him quickly, a doubt on her face; but the doubt changed to
real surprise when she saw how completely he had meant it. She had a
three-cornered face, like a pansy, like a kitten, he thought. He wanted
to stroke her. He was sure she was exquisitely smooth and soft. And now
there was George.

‘Does he--does your husband not like music?’ he asked, saying the first
thing that came into his head, not really wanting in the least to know
what that damned George liked or didn’t like.

She hesitated. ‘I--don’t know,’ she said. ‘He--usedn’t to.’

‘But he doesn’t come here?’

‘How can he?’ She stopped, and then said softly, ‘The poor darling’s
dead.’

His heart gave a bound. A widow. The beastly war had done one good
thing, then,--it had removed George.

‘I say, I’m most frightfully sorry,’ he exclaimed with immense
earnestness, and trying to look solemn.

‘Oh, it’s a long while ago,’ she said, bowing her head a little at the
remembrance.

‘It can’t be so very long ago.’

‘Why can’t it?’

‘Because you haven’t had time.’

She again looked quickly at him, and again saw nothing but sincerity.
Then she was silent a moment. She was thinking, ‘This is rather
sweet’--and the ghost of a wistful little smile passed across her face.
How old was he? Twenty-five or six; not more, she was sure. What a
charming thing youth was,--so headlong, so generous and whole-hearted in
its admirations and beliefs. He was a great, loosely built young man,
with flame-coloured hair, and freckles, and bony red wrists that came a
long way out of his sleeves when he sat supporting his head in his hands
during the love scene, clutching it tighter and tighter as there was
more and more of love. He had deep-set eyes, and a beautifully shaped
broad forehead, and a wide, kindly mouth, and he radiated youth, and
the discontents and quick angers and quicker appreciations of youth.

She suppressed a small sigh, and laughed as she said, ‘You’ve only seen
me at night. Wait till you see me in broad daylight.’

‘Am I ever to be allowed to?’ he asked eagerly.

‘Don’t you ever come to the <i>matinées</i>?’

She knew he didn’t.

‘Oh--<i>matinées</i>. No, of course I can’t come to <i>matinées</i>. I have to
grind all the week in my beastly office, and on Saturdays I go and play
golf with an uncle who is supposed to be going to leave me all his
money.’

‘You should cherish him.’

‘I do. And I haven’t minded till now. But it’s an infernal tie-up
directly one wants to do anything else.’

He looked at her ruefully. Then his face lit up. ‘Sundays,’ he said
eagerly. ‘Sundays I’m free. He’s religious, and won’t play on Sundays.
Couldn’t I----?’

‘There aren’t any <i>matinées</i> on Sunday,’ she said.

‘No but couldn’t I come and see you? Come and call?’

‘Hush,’ she said, lifting her hand as the music of the second act began.

And at the end this time too, before he could say a word, while he was
still struggling with his coat, she slipped away as usual after nodding
good night.

The next time, however, he was more determined, and began at once. It
seemed to him that he had been thinking of her without stopping, and it
was absurd not to know anything at all about a person one thinks of as
much as that, except her name and that her husband was dead. It was of
course a great stride from blank knowing nothing; and that her husband
should be dead was such a relief to him that he couldn’t help thinking
he must be falling in love. All husbands should be dead, he
considered,--nuisances, complicators. What would have happened if George
had been alive? Why, he simply would have lost her, had to give up at
once,--before, almost, beginning. And he was so lonely, and she
was--well, what wasn’t she? She was so like what he had been dreaming of
for years,--a little ball of sweetness, and warmth, and comfort, and
reassurance and love.

The next time she came, then, the minute she appeared he went over to
where she sat and began. He was going to ask her straight out if he
might come and see her, fix that up, get her address; but she chanced to
be late that night, and hardly had he opened his mouth when the lights
were lowered and she put up her hand and said ‘Hush.’

It was no use trying to say what he wanted to say in a whisper, because
the faithful, though few, were fierce, and would tolerate nothing but
total silence. Also he was much afraid she herself preferred the music
to anything he might have to say.

He sat with his arms folded and waited. He had to wait till the very end
of the act, because though he tried again when the curtain went down
between its two scenes, and only the orchestra was playing, he was
shoo’d quiet at once by the outraged faithful.

She, too, said, putting up her hand, ‘Oh, hush.’

He began to feel slightly off <i>The Immortal Hour</i>. But at last the whole
act was over and the lights were up again. She turned her flushed face
to him, the music still shining in her eyes. She was always flushed and
her eyes always shone at the end of the love scene; nor could he ever
see that lovely headlong embrace of the lovers without feeling
extraordinarily stirred up. God, to be embraced like that.... He was
starving for love.

‘Isn’t it marvellous,’ she breathed.

‘Are you ever going to let me come and see you?’ he asked, without
losing another second.

She looked at him a moment, collecting her thoughts, a little surprised.
‘Of course,’ she then said. ‘Do. Though----’ She stopped.

‘Go on,’ he said.

‘I was going to say, Don’t you see me as it is?’

‘But what is this?’

‘Well, it’s two or three times every week,’ she said.

‘Yes, but what is it? Just a casual picking up. You come--you happen to
come--and then you disappear. At any time you might happen not to come,
and then----’

‘Why then,’ she finished for him as he paused, ‘you’d have all this
beautiful stuff to yourself. I don’t think they ever did that last bit
<i>more</i> wonderfully, do you?’ And off she went again, cooing on as usual
about <i>The Immortal Hour</i>, and he hadn’t a chance to get in another word
before the confounded music began again and the faithful with one accord
called out ‘Sh--sh.’

Enthusiasm, thought Christopher, should have its bounds. He forgot that,
to begin with, his enthusiasm had far outdone hers. He folded his arms
once more, a sign with him of determined and grim patience, and when it
was over and she bade him her smiling good night and hurried off without
any more words, he lost no time bothering about putting on his coat but
simply seized it and went after her.

It was difficult to keep her in sight. She could slip through gaps he
couldn’t, and he very nearly lost her at the turn of the stairs. He
caught her up, however, on the steps outside, just as she was about to
plunge out into the rain, and laid his hand on her arm.

She looked round surprised. In the glare of the peculiarly searching
light theatres turn on to their departing and arriving patrons he was
struck by the fatigue on her face. The music was too much for her--she
looked worn out.

‘Look here,’ he said, ‘don’t run away like this. It’s pouring. You wait
here and I’ll get you a taxi.’

‘Oh, but I always go by tube,’ she said, clutching at him a moment as
some people pushing past threw her against him.

‘You can’t go by tube to-night. Not in this rain. And you look
frightfully tired.’

She glanced up at him oddly and laughed a little. ‘Do I?’ she said.
‘Well, I’m not. Not a bit tired. And I can quite well go by tube. It’s
quite close.’

‘You can’t do anything of the sort. Stand here out of the rain while I
get a taxi.’ And off he ran.

For a moment she was on the verge of running off herself, going to the
tube as usual and getting home her own way, for why should she be forced
into an expensive taxi? Then she thought: ‘No--it would be low of me,
simply low. I must try and behave like a little gentleman----’ and
waited.

‘Where shall I tell him to go to?’ asked Christopher, having got his
taxi and put her inside it and simply not had the courage to declare it
was his duty to see her safely home.

She told him the address--90<small>A</small> Hertford Street--and he wondered a moment
why, living in such a street with the very air of Park Lane wafted down
it from just round the corner, she should not only not have a car but
want to go in tubes.

‘Can I give you a lift?’ she asked, leaning forward at the last moment.

He was in the taxi in a flash. ‘I was so hoping you’d say that,’ he
said, pulling the door to with such vigour that a shower of raindrops
jerked off the top of the window-frame on to her dress.

These he had to wipe off, which he did with immense care, and a
handkerchief that deplorably was not one of his new ones. She sat
passive while he did it, going over the evening’s performance, pointing
out, describing, reminding, and he, as he dried, told himself definitely
that he had had enough of <i>The Immortal Hour</i>. She must stop, she must
stop. He must talk to her, must find out more about her. He was burning
to know more about her before the infernally fast taxi arrived at her
home. And she would do nothing, as they bumped furiously along, but
quote and ecstasise.

That was a good word, he thought, as it came into his head; and he was
so much pleased with it that he said it out loud. ‘I wish you wouldn’t
<i>ecstasise</i>,’ he said. ‘Not now. Not for the next few minutes.’

‘Ecstasise?’ she repeated, wondering.

‘Aren’t your shoes wet? Crossing that soaking pavement? I’m sure they
must be wet----’

And he reached down and began to wipe their soles too with his
handkerchief.

She watched him a little surprised, but still passive. This was what it
was to be young. One squandered a beautiful clean handkerchief on a
woman’s dirty shoes without thinking twice. She observed the thickness
of his hair as he bent over her shoes. She had forgotten how thick the
hair of the young could be, having now for so long only contemplated
heads that were elderly.

To him in the half darkness of the taxi she looked really exactly like
the dream, the warm, round, cosy, delicious dream lonely devils like
himself were always dreaming, forlornly hugging their pillows. And as
for her feet--he abruptly left off drying them. The next thing he felt
he would be doing would be kneeling down and kissing them, and he was
afraid she mightn’t like that, and be angry with him, and never let him
see her again.

‘You’ve spoilt your handkerchief,’ she remarked, as he put it, all
muddy, into his pocket.

‘I don’t look at it like that,’ he said, staring straight out of the
front windows, and sitting up very stiff and away in his corner because
he didn’t trust himself, and was mortally afraid of not behaving.

It was now quite evident to Christopher that he was in love, deeply in
love. He felt very happy about it, because for the first time he was, as
he put it, in love properly. All the other times had been so odious,
leaving him making such wry faces. And he had longed and longed to be in
love--properly, with somebody intelligent and educated as well as
adorable. These three: but the greatest of these was the being adorable.

Out of the corners of his eyes he stole a glance at her. She didn’t look
tired any more. What ideal things these dark taxis were, if only the
other person happened to be in love as well. Would she ever be? Would
she ever be again, or was all that buried with that scoundrel George?
She had been fond of George; she had called him poor darling; but then
one easily called the dead poor darlings, and grew fond of them in
proportion as the time grew long since they had left off being alive and
obstructive.

‘Where do you want me to drop you?’ she asked.

‘We’ve passed it,’ he said. ‘At least, he hasn’t gone anywhere near it.
I live in Wyndham Place. I’ll see you safely home and then take him on.’

‘It’s very kind of you,’ she said, ‘but you’ll have to let me pay my
share.’

‘And I say,’ he went on quickly, waving whatever she was doing with her
purse impatiently aside, for by now they were careering across Berkeley
Square and he knew the time was short, ‘you haven’t said if I may come
and see you. I would like so frightfully to come and see you. There are
such a lot of things I want to say--I mean, hear you say. And we do
nothing but talk about that infernal <i>Immortal Hour</i>.’

‘What? Why, I thought you loved it.’

‘Of course I love it, but it isn’t everything. And we’ve given it a
fairly good innings, haven’t we. Do let me come and see you. I
shall’--he was going to say ‘die if you don’t,’ but he was afraid that
might put her off, though he’d be hanged, he said to himself, if it
wasn’t very likely perfectly true, so he quickly substituted ‘I shall be
in London all next Sunday.’

They were at the bottom of Hertford Street. They were rushing along it.
Even while he was speaking they were there at 90<small>A</small>. With a grinding of
the brakes the taxi pulled up,--a violent taxi, the most violent he had
ever met; and he might just as easily have had the luck to get one of
those slow, cautious ancient ones, driven by bearded patriarchs who
always came to his call when he had to catch a train or was late for a
dinner, and always at every cross street drew back with an old-world
courtesy and encouraged even horse-traffic to pass along first.

‘May I come next Sunday?’ he asked, obliged to lean across her and open
the door, because she was preparing, as he didn’t move and merely sat
there, to open it herself. ‘No--don’t get out,’ he said quickly, as she
showed signs of going to. ‘It’s no use standing in the wet. Wait here
while I go and ring----’

‘But look--I have a latchkey,’ she said. ‘Besides, the night porter is
there.’

The night porter was; and hearing a taxi stop he opened the door at that
moment.

‘And about Sunday?’ asked Christopher, with a desperate persistence, as
he helped her out.

‘Yes--do come and see me,’ she said, smiling up at him her friendly, her
adorable smile; and his spirits leapt up to heaven. ‘Only not this
Sunday,’ she added; and his spirits banged down to earth.

‘Why not this Sunday?’ he asked. ‘I shall be free the whole day.’

‘Yes, but I won’t,’ she said, laughing, for he amused her. ‘At least, I
feel sure there is something----’

She knitted her brows, trying to remember. ‘Oh yes,’ she said, ‘Stephen.
I’ve promised to go out with him.’

‘Stephen?’

His heart stood still. George was settled, completely, felicitously, and
now here was Stephen.

Then, just as the door was going to shut on her, leaving him out there
alone, a warm and comforting light flooded his understanding: Stephen
was her son; her little son, her only little son. Hateful as it was to
reflect upon--really marriage was most horrible--George had perpetuated
himself, and this delicate small thing, this exquisite soft little
creature, had been the vehicle for his idiotic wish to carry on his
silly name.

‘I suppose,’ he said, detaining her, his hat still in his hand, the rain
falling on his bare head, the porter holding the door open and looking
on, ‘you’re taking him to the Zoo?’

He could think of no place so likely as the Zoo on Sunday for Stephen,
and to the Zoo he also would go, and have a look at those jolly little
monkeys again.

‘The Zoo?’ she repeated, puzzled.

Then she began to laugh. ‘I wonder,’ she said, her face brimming over
with laughter, ‘why you think Stephen wants to be taken to the Zoo. Poor
darling’--another poor darling, and this time a live one--‘why, he’s as
old as I am.’

As old as she was. Stephen.

She waved her hand. ‘Come some other Sunday,’ she called out as the door
shut.

He stood for a moment staring at it. Then he turned away slowly, putting
his hat on as he went down the steps, and he was walking away through
the rain lost in the most painful thought, mechanically heading for
home, when the taxi-driver, realising with amazed indignation what his
fare was doing, jerked him back to his obligations by vigorously and
rudely shouting ‘Hi!’




II


Ten days to wait till the Sunday after. It was only Friday night. He
would see her in between, of course, at <i>The Immortal Hour</i>, and might
perhaps manage to take her home again, but would he be able in these
snippets of time, these snatches, these beginnings interrupted by the
curtain going up or the lights going down, to find out from her who and
what was Stephen? It was intolerable to have at last come across her and
instantly to find oneself up against Stephen.

Dismal were his conjectures as he was rattled home by the taxi so lately
made sweet by her presence. Stephen couldn’t be her brother, for nobody
made appointments ahead and carried them out so conscientiously with
brothers; and he couldn’t be her uncle or her nephew, the only two
remaining satisfactory relationships, because she had said he was as old
as she was. Who, then, and what was Stephen?

A faint hope flickered for an instant in the darkness of his mind:
sometimes uncles were young; sometimes nephews were old. But the thing
was too feeble to give warmth, and almost immediately went out. All
Stephens should be stoned, he thought. It was what was done with the
first one he had ever heard of; pity the practice hadn’t been kept up.
How happy he now would have been except for Stephen. How happy, going
to see her the next Sunday but one, going really to see her and sit down
squarely with her by himself in a quiet room and look at her frontways
instead of for ever only sideways, and she without the hat that
extinguished such a lot of what anyhow was such a little. He might even,
he thought, after a bit, after they had got really natural with each
other--and he felt he could be more natural with her, more happily
himself than with any one he had ever met--he might even after a bit
have sat on the floor at her feet, as near as possible to her little
shoes. And then he would have told her all about everything. God, how he
wanted to tell somebody all about everything--somebody who understood.
There wasn’t anybody <i>really</i> for understanding except a woman. It
didn’t need brains to understand; it didn’t need learning, and a grind
of education and logic and scientific detachment, and all the confounded
rig-out Lewes, who shared his rooms with him, had. Such things were all
right as part of a whole, and were more important, he was ready to
admit, than any other part of it if one <i>had</i> the whole; but a man
starved if that was all--just starved. Life without a woman in it, a
woman of one’s own, was intolerable.

His face as he opened the door with his latchkey was gloomy. Lewes would
be sitting in there; Lewes with his brains. Brains, brains....

Christopher had no mother or sister, and as long as he could remember
seemed to have been by himself with males--uncles who brought him up,
clerics who prepared him for school, again uncles with whom he played
golf and spent the festivals of the year, Christmas, Easter, and
Whitsuntide; and here in his rooms Lewes was waiting, always Lewes,
making profound and idiotic comments on everything, and wanting to sit
up half the night and reason. Reason! He was sick of reason. He wanted
some one he could be romantic with, and sentimental with, and poetic,
and--yes, religious with, if he felt like it, without having to feel
ashamed. And how extraordinarily he wanted to touch--to touch lovely
soft surfaces, to feel, to be warm and close up. He had had enough of
this sterile, starved life with Lewes. Three years of it he had had,
ever since he left Balliol,--three years of coming back in the evenings
and finding Lewes, who hardly ever went out at night, sunk deep in his
chair, smoking in the same changeless position, his feet up on the
chimney-piece, lean, dry, horribly intelligent; and they would talk and
talk, and inquire and inquire, and when they talked of love and
women--and of course they sometimes talked of love and women--Lewes
would bring out views which Christopher, whose views they used to be
too, only he had forgotten that, considered, now that he had come to
know Catherine, as so much--the word was his--tripe.

He shut the door as quietly as possible, intending to go straight to bed
and avoid Lewes for that evening at least. He had been injudicious
enough after the first time he sat next to Catherine and made friends
with her to tell Lewes about it when he got back, and to tell him with
what he quickly realised was unnecessary warmth; and naturally after
that Lewes asked him from time to time how things were developing.
Christopher almost immediately left off liking this, and liked it less
and less as he liked Catherine more and more; and among many other
things he afterwards regretted having told Lewes in the excitement of
that first discovery, was that she was the woman one dreams of.

‘No woman is ever the woman one dreams of,’ said Lewes, who was thirty,
so knew.

‘You wait till you’ve seen her, old man,’ Christopher said, nettled;
though it was just the sort of thing he had freely said himself up to
the day before.

‘My dear chap--see her? I?’

Lewes made a fatigued gesture with his pipe. ‘I thought you long ago
realised that I’m through with women,’ he said.

‘That’s because you don’t know any,’ said Christopher, who wasn’t liking
Lewes at that moment.

Lewes gazed at him with mild surprise. ‘Not know any?’ he repeated.

‘Not intimately. Not any decent ones intimately.’

Lewes continued to gaze.

‘I thought,’ he said presently, with patient mildness, ‘you knew I have
a mother and sisters.’

‘Mothers and sisters aren’t women--they’re merely relations,’ said
Christopher; and from that time Lewes’s inquiries were less frequent and
more gingerly, and mixed with anxiety. He was fond of his friend. He
disliked the idea of possibly losing him. He seemed to him to be well on
the way to being in love seriously; and love, as he had observed it, was
a great sunderer of friendships.

He heard him come in on the Friday night, and he heard him go, so
unusually, into his room after that careful shutting of the front door,
and he wondered. What was the woman doing to his friend? Making him
unhappy already? She had made him more cautious already, and more
silent; she had already come down between them like a deadening curtain.

Lewes moved slightly in his chair, and went on with Donne, whom he was
reading just then with intelligent appreciation tinged with surprise at
the lasting quality of his passion for his wife; but he couldn’t, he
found, attend to Donne as whole-heartedly as usual, for he was listening
for any sounds from the next room, and his thoughts, even as his eyes
read steadily down the page, were going round and round in a circle
something like this: <i>Poor Chris. A widow. Got him in her clutches. And
what a name. Cumfrit. Good God. Poor Chris.</i> ...

From the next room there came sounds of walking up and down--careful
walkings up and down, as of one desiring not to attract attention and
yet impelled to walk--and Lewes’s thoughts went round in their circle
faster and more emphatically than ever: <i>Poor Chris. A widow. Cumfrit.
Good God.</i> ...

The worst of it was, he thought, shutting up Donne with a bang and
throwing him on the table, that on these occasions friends could only
look on. There was nothing to be done whatever, except to watch as
helplessly as at a death-bed. And without even, he said to himself, the
hope, which sometimes supports such watchers, of a sure and glorious
resurrection. His friend had to go through with it, and disappear out of
his, Lewes’s, life; for never, he had observed, was any one the same
friend exactly afterwards as before, whether the results of the
adventure were happy or unhappy. <i>Poor Chris. A widow. Clutches.</i> ...

The sounds of walking about presently left off. Lewes would have liked
to have been able to look in and see for himself that his unfortunate
and probably doomed friend was safely asleep, but he couldn’t do that;
so he lit his pipe again and reached over for Donne and had another go
at him, able to concentrate better, now that the footsteps had left off,
but still with a slightly cocked ear.

What was his surprise at breakfast next morning to see Christopher
looking happy, and eating eggs and bacon with his usual simple relish.
‘Hullo,’ he couldn’t help saying, ‘you seem rather pleased with life.’

‘I am. It’s raining,’ said Christopher.

‘So it is,’ said Lewes, glancing at the window; and he poured out his
coffee in silence, because he was unable to see any connection.

‘I can chuck that beastly golf,’ Christopher explained in a moment, his
mouth full.

‘So you can,’ said Lewes, well aware that up to now Christopher had
looked forward with almost childish eagerness to his Saturdays.

‘I’ve been out already and sent a telegram to my uncle,’ said
Christopher.

‘But I thought on occasions like this,’ said Lewes, ‘when the weather
prevented golf, you still went down and played chess with him.’

‘Damn chess,’ said Christopher.

And in Lewes’s head once more began to revolve, <i>Poor Chris. Cumfrit.
Clutches.</i> ...




III


Christopher had had an inspiration--sudden, as are all inspirations--the
night before, after walking up and down his room for the best part of an
hour: he would throw over his uncle and golf the next day, and devote
the afternoon to calling on Catherine, thus getting in ahead, anyhow, of
Stephen. How simple. Let his uncle be offended and disappointed as much
as he liked, let him leave his thousands to the boot-boy for all he
cared. He would go and see Catherine; and keep on going and seeing her,
the whole afternoon if needs be, if she were out at the first shot.
Whereupon, having arrived at this decision, peace enfolded him, and he
went to bed and slept like a contented baby.

He began calling in Hertford Street at three.

She was out. The porter told him she was out when he inquired which
floor she was on.

‘When will she be in?’ he asked.

The porter said he couldn’t say; and Christopher disliked the porter.

He went away and walked about in the park, on wet earth and with heavy
drops falling on him in showers from the trees.

At half-past four he was back again. Tea time. She would be in to tea,
unless she had it in some one else’s house; in which case he would call
again when she had had time to finish it.

She was still out.

‘I’ll go up and ask for myself,’ said Christopher, who disliked the
porter more than ever; and at this the porter began to dislike
Christopher.

‘There’s only this one way in,’ said the porter, his manner hardening.
‘I’d be bound to have seen her.’

‘Which floor?’ said Christopher briefly.

‘First,’ said the porter, still more briefly.

The first-floor flat of a building in Hertford Street seemed removed,
thought Christopher as he walked up to it on a very thick carpet, and
ignored the lift, which had anyhow not been suggested by the hardened
porter, from the necessity for travelling by tube. Yet she had said she
always went to <i>The Immortal Hour</i> by tube. Was it possible that there
existed people who enjoyed tubes? He thought it was not possible. And to
emerge from the quiet mahoganied dignity of the entrance hall of these
flats and proceed on one’s feet to the nearest tube instead of getting
into at least a taxi, caused wonder to settle on his mind. A Rolls-Royce
wouldn’t have been out of the picture, but at least there ought to be a
taxi.

Why did she do such things, and tire herself out, and get her lovely
little feet wet? He longed to take care of her, to prevent her in all
her doings, to put his great strong body between her and everything that
could in any way hurt her. He hoped George had taken this line. He was
sure he must have. Any man would. Any man--the words brought him back to
Stephen, who was, he was convinced, a suitor, even if she did forget
his name. Perhaps she forgot because he was one of many. What so likely?
One of many....

He felt suddenly uneasy again, and rang the bell of the flat in a great
hurry, as if by getting in quickly he could somehow forestall and
confound events.

The door was opened by Mrs. Mitcham, whom he was later so abundantly to
know. All unconscious of the future they looked upon each other for the
first time; and he saw a most respectable elderly person, not a
parlourmaid, for she was without a cap, nor a lady’s maid he judged for
some reason, though he knew little of ladies’ maids, but more like his
idea--he had often secretly wished he had one--of a nanny; and she saw a
fair, long-legged young man, with eyes like the eyes of children when
they arrive at a birthday party.

‘Will Mrs. Cumfrit be in soon?’ he asked; and the way he asked matched
the look in his eyes. ‘I know she is out--but how soon will she be in?’

‘I couldn’t say, sir,’ said Mrs. Mitcham, considering the eager-eyed
young gentleman.

‘Well, look here--could I come in and wait?’

Naturally Mrs. Mitcham hesitated.

‘Well, I’ll only have to wait downstairs, then, and I can’t stand that
porter.’

Mrs. Mitcham happened not to be able to stand the porter either, and her
face relaxed a little.

‘Is Mrs. Cumfrit expecting you, sir?’ she asked.

‘Yes,’ said Christopher boldly; for so she was, the following Sunday
week.

‘She usually tells me----’ began Mrs. Mitcham doubtfully; but she did
draw a little aside, upon which he promptly went in. And as he gave her
his hat and coat she hoped it was all right, for she thought she had
her mistress’s friends and acquaintances at her fingers’ ends, and the
young gentleman had certainly never been there before.

She took him towards the drawing-room.

‘What name shall I say, sir, when Mrs. Cumfrit comes in?’ she inquired,
turning to him at the door.

‘Mr. Christopher Monckton,’ he said,--abstractedly, because he was going
to see Catherine’s room, the room she probably spent most of her time
in, her shrine; and Mrs. Mitcham hesitating a little--for suppose she
had done wrong, letting in a stranger, and the tea-table put ready with
poor Mr. Cumfrit’s silver spoons and sugar-basin on it? Ought she not
rather to have asked the young gentleman to wait in the hall?--Mrs.
Mitcham, with doubt in her heart, opened the door and allowed him to
pass in, eyeing him as he passed.

No, he didn’t look like that sort of person at all, she rebuked and
encouraged herself. She knew a gentleman when she saw one. Still, she
left the door a tiny crack open, so that she would be able to hear
if---- Also, she thought it as well to cross the hall with careful
footsteps, and cast an appraising eye over his coat.

It was the coat of a gentleman; a rough coat, a worn coat, but
unmistakable, and she went softly back into her kitchen, leaving its
door wide open, and while she as noiselessly as possible cut bread and
butter she listened for the sound of her mistress coming in, and, even
more attentively, in order to be quite on the safe side, for the sound
of any one going out.

The last thing, however, in the world that the young man who had just
got into the drawing-room wanted to do was to go out of it again. He
wanted to stay where he was for ever. Wonderful to have this little
time alone with her things before she herself appeared. It was like
reading the enchanting preface to a marvellous book. Next to being with
her, this was the happiest of situations. For these things were as much
expressions of herself as the clothes she wore. They would describe her
to him, let him into at least a part, and a genuine part, of her
personality.

And then, at his very first glance round, he felt it was not her room at
all, but a man’s room. George’s room. George still going on. And going
on flagrantly, shamelessly, in his great oak chairs and tables, and
immense oil paintings, and busts, marble busts, corpsey white things on
black pedestals in corners. Did nobody ever really die, then? he asked
himself indignantly. Was there no end to people’s insistence on somehow
surviving? Hardened into oak, gathered up into busts and picture frames,
the essence of George still solidly cohabited with his widow. How in
such a mausoleum could she ever leave off remembering him? Clearly she
didn’t want to, or she would have chucked all this long ago, and had
bright things, colour, flowers, silky soft things, things like herself,
about her. She didn’t want to. She had canonised George, in that strange
way people did canonise quite troublesome and unpleasant persons once
they were safely dead.

He stood staring round him, and telling himself that he knew how it had
happened--oh yes, he could see it all--how at the moment of George’s
death Catherine, flooded with pity, with grief, perhaps with love now
that she was no longer obliged to love, had clung on to his
arrangements, not suffering a thing to be touched or moved or altered,
pathetically anxious to keep it exactly as he used to, to keep him still
alive at least in his furniture. Other widows he had heard of had done
this; and widowers--but fewer of them--had done it too. He could imagine
it easily, if one loved some one very much, or was desperately sorry
because one hadn’t. But to go on year after year? Yet, once one had
begun, how stop? There was only one way to stop happily and naturally,
and that was to marry again.

And then, as he was looking round, his nose lifted in impatient scorn of
George’s post-mortem persistence, and quite prepared to see whisky and
cigars, grown dusty, on some table in a corner--why not? they would only
be in keeping with all the rest--he caught sight of a little white
object on the heavy sofa at right angles to a fireplace in which feebly
flickered the minutest of newly lit fires. A bit of her. A trace, at
last, of her.

He darted across and pounced on it. Soft, white, sweet with the
sweetness he had noticed when he was near her, it was a small fox fur, a
thing a woman puts round her neck.

He snatched it up, and held it to his face. How like her, how like her.
He was absorbed in it, buried in it, breathing its delicate sweet smell;
and Catherine, coming in quietly with her latchkey, saw him like this,
over there by the sofa with his back to the door.

She stood quiet in the doorway, watching him with surprised amusement,
because it seemed so funny. Really, to have this sort of thing happening
to one’s boa at one’s age! Queer young man. Perhaps having all that
flaming red hair made one....

But, though he had heard no sound, he was aware of her, and turned round
quickly, and caught her look of amusement, and flushed a deep red.

He put the fur carefully down on the sofa again and came over to her.
‘Well, why shouldn’t I?’ he said defiantly, throwing back his head.

She laughed and shook hands and said she was very glad he had come. She
was so easy, so easy; taking things so much as a matter of course,
things that were so little a matter of course that they made him
tremble--things like drying her shoes the night before in the taxi, or
feeling on his face the soft white fur. If she would be shy, be
self-conscious for even an instant, he thought, he would be more master
of himself as well as of her. But she wasn’t. Not a trace of it. Just
simple friendliness, as if everything he said and did was usual, was
inevitable, was what she quite expected, or else didn’t matter one way
or the other. She wasn’t even surprised to see him. Yet he had assured
her he never could get away on Saturdays.

‘I couldn’t help coming,’ he said, the flush fixed on his face. ‘You
didn’t expect me to wait really till Sunday week, did you?’

‘I’m very glad you didn’t,’ she said, ringing the bell for tea and
sitting down at the tea-table and beginning to pull off her gloves.

They stuck because they were wet with the rain she had been out in.

‘Let me do that,’ he said, eagerly, watching her every movement.

She held out her hands at once.

‘You’ve been walking in the rain,’ he said reproachfully, pulling away
at the soaked gloves. Then, looking down at her face, the grey hard
daylight of the March afternoon full on it from the high windows, he saw
that she was tired--fagged out, in fact--and he added, alarmed, ‘What
have you been doing?’

‘Doing?’ she repeated, smiling up at the way he was staring at her.
‘Why, coming home as quickly as I could out of the rain.’

‘But why do you look so tired?’

She laughed. ‘Do I look tired?’ she said. ‘Well, I’m not a bit.’

‘Then why do you look as if you had walked hundreds of miles and not
slept for weeks?’

‘I told you you ought to see me in daylight,’ she said, with amused eyes
on his face of concern. ‘You’ve only seen me lit up at night, or in the
dark. I looked just the same then, only you couldn’t see me. Anybody can
look not tired if it’s dark enough.’

‘That’s nonsense,’ he said. ‘You’ve been walking about, and going in
tubes. Look here, I wish you’d tell me something----’

‘I’ll tell you anything,’ she said.

What sweet eyes she had, what incredibly sweet eyes, if only they
weren’t so tired....

‘But you must sit down,’ she went on. ‘You’re so enormous that it hurts
my neck to have to look up at you.’

He threw himself into the chair next to her. ‘What I want to know is----’ he began, leaning forward.

He broke off as the door opened, and Mrs. Mitcham came in with the tea.

‘Go on,’ said Catherine encouragingly. ‘Unless it’s something
overwhelmingly indiscreet.’

‘Well, I was only going to ask you--do you <i>like</i> tubes?’

She laughed. She was always laughing. ‘No,’ she said, pouring out the
tea.

The teapot was impressive; all the tea arrangements were impressive,
except the part you ate. On that had descended a severely restraining
hand, thinning the butter on the bread, withholding the currants from
the cake. Not that Christopher saw anything of this, because he saw only
Catherine; but afterwards, when he went over the visit in his head, he
somehow was aware of a curious contrast between the tea and the picture
frames.

‘Then why do you go in them?’ he asked, Mrs. Mitcham having gone again
and shut the door.

‘Because they’re cheap.’

His answer to that was to glance round the room--round, in his mind’s
eye, Hertford Street as well, and Park Lane so near by, and the reserved
expensiveness of the entrance hall, and the well-got-up, even if
personally objectionable, porter.

She followed his glance. ‘Tubes and this,’ she said. ‘Yes, I know. They
don’t match, do they. Perhaps,’ she went on, ‘I needn’t be so
frightfully careful. But I’m rather scared just to begin with. I shall
know better after the first year----’

‘What first year?’ he asked, as she paused; but he wasn’t really
listening, because she had put up her hands and taken off her hat, and
for the first time he saw her without her being half extinguished.

He gazed at her. She went on talking. He didn’t hear. She had dark hair,
brushed off her forehead. It had tiny silver threads in it. He saw them.
She was, as he had felt, as he had somehow known she was, older than
himself,--but only a little; nothing to matter; just enough to make it
proper that he should adore her, that his place should be at her feet.
He gazed at her forehead,--so candid, with something dove-like about it,
with something extraordinarily good, and reassuring, and infinitely
kind, but with faint lines on it as though she were worried. And then
her grey eyes, beautifully spaced, very light grey with long dark
eyelashes, had a pathetic look in them of having been crying. He hadn’t
noticed that before. At the theatre they had shone. He hoped she hadn’t
been crying, and wasn’t worried, and that her laughing now wasn’t only
being put on for him, for the visitor.

She stopped short in what she had been saying, noticing that he wasn’t
listening and was looking at her with extreme earnestness. Her
expression changed to amusement.

‘Why do you look at me so solemnly?’ she asked.

‘Because I’m terribly afraid you’ve been crying.’

‘Crying?’ she wondered. ‘What should I have been crying about?’

‘I don’t know. How should I know? I don’t know anything.’

He leaned over and timidly touched her sleeve. He had to. He couldn’t
help it. He hoped she hadn’t noticed.

‘Tell me some things,’ he said.

‘I have been telling you, and you didn’t listen,’ she said.

‘Because I was looking at you. You know, I’ve never seen you once in my
life before without your hat.’

‘Never once in your life before,’ she repeated smiling. ‘As if you had
been seeing me since your cradle.’

‘I’ve always known you,’ he said solemnly; and at this she rather
quickly offered him some cake, which he ignored.

‘In my dreams,’ he went on, gazing at her with eyes which were, she was
afraid, a little--well, not those of an ordinary caller.

‘Oh--dreams. My <i>dear</i> Mr. Monckton. Do,’ she said, waving
intangiblenesses aside, ‘have some more tea.’

‘You must call me Chris.’

‘But why?’

‘Because we’ve known each other always. Because we’re going to know each
other always. Because I--because I----’

‘Well but, you know, we haven’t,’ she interrupted--for who could tell
what her impetuous new friend might be going to say next? ‘Not really.
Not outside make-believe. Not beyond <i>The Immortal Hour</i>. Can you see
the cigarettes anywhere? Yes--there they are. Over there on that table.
Will you get them?’

He got up and fetched them.

‘You’ve no idea how lonely I am,’ he said, putting them down near her.

‘Are you? I’m very sorry. But--are you really? I should imagine you with
heaps and heaps of friends. You’re so--so----’ She hesitated. ‘So
warm-hearted,’ she finished; and couldn’t help smiling as she said it,
for he was apparently very warm-hearted indeed. His heart, like his
hair, seemed incandescent.

‘Heaps and heaps of friends don’t make one less lonely as long as one
hasn’t got--well, the one person. No, I won’t smoke. Who is Stephen?’

How abrupt. She couldn’t leap round with this quickness. ‘Stephen?’ she
repeated, a little bewildered. Then she remembered, and her face again
brimmed with amusement.

‘Oh yes--you thought I was going to take him to the Zoo to-morrow,’ she
said. ‘The Zoo! Why, he’s preaching to-morrow evening at St. Paul’s.
You’d better go and listen.’

He caught hold of her hands. ‘You must tell me one thing,’ he said. ‘You
<i>must</i>.’

‘I told you I’ll tell you anything,’ she said, pulling her hands away.

‘Is Stephen--are you--you’re not going to marry Stephen?’

For a moment she stared at him in profound astonishment. Then she burst
into laughter, and laughed and laughed till her eyes really did cry.

‘Oh, my dear boy--oh, my dear, dear boy!’ she laughed, wiping her eyes
while he sat and watched her.

And at that moment Mrs. Mitcham appeared at the door and announced two
ladies--their miserable name sounded like Fanshawe--and two ladies, who
might well be Fanshawes, immediately swam in and enveloped Catherine in
arms of enormous length, it seemed to him, kissing her effusively--how
deeply he hated them--and exclaiming in incoherent twitters that they
had come to carry her off, that the car was there, that they wouldn’t
take no, that Ned was waiting----

Lord, what snakes.

He went away at once. No good staying just to see her being clawed away
by Fanshawes to the waiting Ned. And who the devil was Ned? Yes, there
he was--waiting right enough, sitting snugly in a Daimler that looked
very new and expensive, while the porter, a changed man, hovered
solicitously near. Ned needed every bit of the new Daimler and the fur
rug and the hideously smart chauffeur to make up for the shape of his
silly nose, thought Christopher, scornfully striding off down the
street.




IV


Till the following Friday his week was harassed. It was wonderful to be
in love, to have found her, but it would have been still more wonderful
if he had known a little more about her. He wanted to be able to think
of her and follow her through each minute of the day,--picture her, see
her in his mind’s eye doing this and doing that, going here and going
there; and there was nothing but a blank.

They were such strangers. Only, of course, strangers on the lower level
of everyday circumstances. On the higher level, the starry level of
splendid, unreasoning love, he had, as he told her, always known her.
But to know her on that level and not on any other was awkward. It cut
him off so completely. He couldn’t think what to do next.

Once, before he met her, in those dark days when he was still a fool and
reasoned, he had remarked to Lewes that he thought it a pity and liable
to lead to disappointment that love should begin, as it apparently did
begin, suddenly, at the top of emotion. There ought, he said, to be a
gradual development in acquaintanceship, a steady unfolding of knowledge
of each other, a preparatory and of course extremely agreeable
crescendo, leading up to the august passion itself. As it was, ignorant
of everything really about the woman except what she looked and sounded
like, why--there you were. It was bad, finished Christopher, aloofly
considering the faulty arrangements of nature, to start with
infatuation, because you couldn’t possibly do anything after that but
cool off.

Now, remembering this when he couldn’t sleep one night, he laughed
himself to scorn for a prig and an idiot. That’s all one knew about it
when one wasn’t in love oneself. Love gave one a sixth sense. It
instantly apprehended. The symbol of the sweet outer aspect of the loved
one was before one’s eyes; from it one was aware of her inward and
spiritual grace. The beloved looked so and so; therefore she was so and
so. Love knew. But, on a lower level, on the level of mere convenience,
it would be better, he admitted, to have had some preliminary
acquaintance. He worshipped Catherine, and they were strangers. This was
awkward. It cut him off. He didn’t know what to do next.

‘<i>I must see you</i>,’ he wrote, after three evenings at <i>The Immortal
Hour</i> by himself. ‘<i>When can I?</i>’

And he sent the note with some roses,--those delicate pale roses in bud
that come out so exquisitely in a warm atmosphere. They reminded him of
her. They too were symbols, he said to himself, symbols of what would
happen to her also if only she would let him be her atmosphere, her
warmth; and though these roses were very expensive--ever so much for
each bud--he sent three dozen, a real bunch of them, rejoicing in the
extravagance, in doing something for her that he couldn’t really afford.

She wrote back: ‘<i>But you are coming to tea on Sunday. Didn’t we say you
were? Your roses are quite beautiful. Thank you so very, very much.</i>’

And when he saw the letter, her first letter, the first bit of her
handwriting, by his plate at breakfast, he seized it so quickly and
turned so red that Lewes was painfully clear as to who had written it.
<i>Poor Chris. Cumfrit. Clutches.</i> ...

So he wasn’t to see her till the next Sunday. Well, this state of things
couldn’t be allowed to go on. It was simply too starkly ridiculous. He
must get on quicker next time; manage somehow to explain, to put things
on their right footing. What the things were, and what the right footing
was, he was far too much perturbed to consider.

Of course he had gone to St. Paul’s on the Sunday after his visit, but
he had not seen her. He might as easily have hoped to find the smallest
of needles in the biggest of haystacks as Catherine at that evening
service, with the lights glaring in one’s eyes, and rows and rows of
dark figures, all apparently exactly alike, stretching away into space.

Stephen he had seen, and also heard, and had dismissed him at once from
his mind as one about whom he needn’t worry. No wonder she had laughed
when he asked if she were going to marry him. Marry Stephen? Good God.
The same age as she was, indeed! Why, he was old enough to be her
father. Standing up in the pulpit he looked like a hawk, a dry hawk.
What he said, after the first sentence, Christopher didn’t know, because
of how earnestly he was still searching for Catherine; but his name, he
saw on the service paper a sidesman thrust into his hand, was
Colquhoun,--the Rev. Stephen Colquhoun, Rector of Chickover with Barton
St. Mary, wherever that might be, and he was preaching, so Christopher
gathered from the text and the first sentence, in praise of Love.

What could he know about it, thought Christopher, himself quivering with
the glorious thing,--what could he know, that hawk up there, that
middle-aged bone? As well might they put up some congealed spinster to
explain to a congregation of mothers the emotions of parenthood. And he
thought no more about Stephen. He no longer wanted him stoned. It would
be waste of stones.

Of Ned that week he did sometimes think, because although Ned was
manifestly a worm he was also equally manifestly a rich worm, and might
as such dare to pester Catherine with his glistening attentions. But he
felt too confident in Catherine’s beautiful nature to be afraid of Ned.
Catherine, who loved beauty, who was so much moved by it--witness her
rapt face at <i>The Immortal Hour</i>--would never listen to blandishments
from anyone with Ned’s nose. Besides, Ned was elderly. In spite of the
fur rug up to his chin, Christopher had seen that all right. He was an
elderly, puffy man. Elderliness and love! He grinned to himself. If only
the elderly could see themselves....

Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday he went to <i>The Immortal Hour</i>, and sat
and wilted because she wasn’t there. Thursday morning he sent her the
roses. Friday morning he got her letter, and spent several hours when he
ought to have been working in assuring himself that this couldn’t go on,
this being separated, this having to wait two more whole days and a
half, and then perhaps call there only to find ossifications like the
Fanshawes calling there too, and turgescences like Ned, and that
callosity Stephen.

At lunch-time on Friday he telephoned to her, and held his breath while
he waited, for fear she should be out.

No--there was her voice, her heavenly little coo. ‘Oh, my <i>darling</i>!’ he
was within an ace of crying down the thing in his relief. Only just did
he manage not to, and as it took him a moment to gulp the word back
again she repeated with gentle inquiry--what a perfect telephone
voice--‘Yes--who is it?’

‘It’s me. Chris. Look here----’

‘Who?’

‘Chris. Oh, you know. You said you’d call me Chris. Christopher, then.
Monckton. Look here, I wish you’d come and dine, will you? To-night?
There’s an awfully jolly little restaurant--what? You can’t? Oh, but you
<i>must</i>. Why can’t you? What? I can’t hear if you laugh. You’re not going
to that thing <i>again</i>? Why, what nonsense. It’s becoming an obsession.
We’ll go to it to-morrow night. Why didn’t you go last night? And the
night before? No--I want to talk. No--we can’t talk there. No, we <i>must</i>
talk. No it isn’t--not at all the same thing. I’ll come and fetch you at
half-past seven. Yes but you <i>must</i>. I think I’d better be at your place
at seven. You’ll be ready, won’t you? Yes I know--but that can wait till
to-morrow night. All right then--seven. I say, it’s simply frightfully
ador--nice of you. Hullo--hullo--are you there? They tried to cut us
off. Look here--I’d better fetch you a little before seven--say a
quarter to--because the place might be crowded. And I say, look
here--hullo, hullo--don’t cut us off--oh, damn.’

The last words were addressed to deafness. He hung up the receiver, and
snatching at his hat went off to the restaurant, an amusing one that
specialised in Spanish dishes and might, he thought, interest her, to
choose and secure his table. He then went out and bought some more of
the roses she said were quite beautiful, and took them to the head
waiter, who was all intelligence, and instructed him to keep them
carefully apart in water till a quarter to seven, when they were to be
put on his table. Then he went to Wyndham Place to see if Lewes, who was
working at economics and sat indoors writing most of the day, would come
out and play squash with him, for he couldn’t go back to his office as
if it were a day like any other day, and exercise he must have,--violent
exercise, or he felt he would burst.

Lewes went. He sighed to himself as he pushed his books aside, seeing in
this break-up of his afternoon a further extension of the Cumfrit
clutches. Poor Chris. He was in the bliss-stage now, the merest glance
at his face showed it; but--Lewes, besides being a highly promising
political economist, was also attached to the poets--

    Full soon his soul would have her earthly freight,
    And widows lie upon him with a weight
    Heavy as frost....

Alas, alas, how could he have committed such a profanity? Lewes loathed
himself. The woman, of course, goading him,--Mrs. Cumfrit. And his
feeling towards a woman who could lower him to parody a beautiful poem
became as icily hostile as Adam’s ought to have been to Eve after she
had lowered him to the eating of half the apple; instead of which the
inexperienced man was weak, and let himself be inveigled into doing that
which had ultimately produced himself, Chris, and Mrs. Cumfrit.

Adam and Chris, reflected Lewes, sadly going to the club where they
played, and not speaking a word the whole way, were alike in this that
they neither of them could do without a woman. And always, whenever
there was a woman, trouble began; sooner or later trouble began. Or, if
not actual trouble, what a deadly, what a disintegrating dulness.

Lewes knew from his friend’s face, from the way he walked, from the
sound of his voice, and presently also from the triumphant quickness and
accuracy with which he beat him at squash, that something he considered
marvellous had happened to him that day. What had the widow consented
to? Neither of them now ever mentioned her; and if he, Lewes, said the
least thing about either women or love,--and being so deep in Donne and
wanting to discuss him it was difficult not to mention these two
disturbers of a man’s peace--if ever he said the least thing about them,
his poor friend at once began talking, very loud and most unnaturally,
on subjects such as the condition of the pavement in Wyndham Place, or
the increasing number of chocolate-coloured omnibuses in the streets.
Things like that. Stupid things, about which he said more stupid things.
And he used to be so intelligent, so vivid-minded. It was calamitous.

‘Shall we go and dine somewhere together to-night, old man?’ he couldn’t
resist suggesting, as Christopher walked back with him, more effulgent
than ever after the satisfaction of his triumphant exercise, and
chatting gaily on topics that neither of them cared twopence for. Just
to see what he would say, Lewes asked him.

‘I can’t to-night,’ said Christopher, suddenly very short.

‘<i>The Immortal Hour</i> again, I suppose,’ ventured Lewes after a pause,
trying to sound airy.

‘No,’ snapped Christopher. ‘I’m dining out.’

And Lewes, silenced, resigned, and melancholy, gave up.




V


When Christopher got to Hertford Street Catherine wasn’t ready because
he was earlier than he had said he would be; but Mrs. Mitcham opened the
door, wide and welcomingly this time, and looked pleased to see him and
showed him at once into the drawing-room, saying her mistress would not
be long.

The fire had been allowed to go out, and the room was so cold that his
roses were still almost as much in bud as ever. People had been there
that afternoon, he saw; the chairs were untidy, and there were cigarette
ashes. Well, not one of them was taking her out to dinner. They might
call, but he took her out to dinner.

Directly she came in he noticed she had a different hat on. It was a
very pretty hat, much prettier than the other one. Was it possible she
had put it on for him? Yet for whom else? Absorbed in the entrancingness
of this thought he had the utmost difficulty in saying how do you do
properly. He stared very hard, and gripped her hand very tight, and for
a moment didn’t say anything. And round her shoulders was the white fox
thing he had held to his face the other day; and her little shoes--well,
he had better not look at them.

‘This is great fun,’ she said as he gripped her hand, and she
successfully hid the agony caused by her fingers and her rings being
crushed together.

‘It’s heaven,’ said Christopher.

‘No, no, that’s not nearly such fun as--just fun,’ she said, furtively
rubbing her released hand and making a note in her mind not to wear
rings next time her strong young friend was likely to say how do you do.

The pain had sent the blood flying up into her face. Christopher gazed
at her. Surely she was blushing? Surely she was no longer so
self-possessed and sure? Was it possible she was beginning to be shy? It
gave him an extraordinary happiness to think so, and she, looking at him
standing there with such a joyful face, couldn’t but catch and reflect
some at least of his light.

She laughed. It really was fun. It made her feel so young, frolicking
off like this with a great delighted boy. He was such an interesting,
unusual boy, full of such violent enthusiasms. She wished he need never
grow older. How charming to be as young and absurd as that, she thought,
laughing up at the creature. One never noticed how delightful youth was
till one’s own had finished. Well, she was going to be young for this
one evening. He treated her as if she were; did he really think it? It
was difficult to believe, yet still more difficult not to believe when
one watched his face as he said all the things he did say. How amusing,
how amusing. She had been solemn for so long, cloistered in duties for
such years; and here all of a sudden was somebody behaving as if she
were twenty. It made her <i>feel</i> twenty; feel, anyhow, of his own age.
What fun. For one evening....

She laughed gaily. (No, he thought, she wasn’t shy. She was as secure as
ever, and as sure of her little darling self. He must have dreamed that
blush.) ‘Where are we going?’ she asked. ‘I haven’t been to a
restaurant for ages. Though I’m not sure we wouldn’t have been happier
at <i>The Immortal Hour</i>.’

‘I am,’ said Christopher. ‘Quite sure. Don’t you know we’ve got
marvellous things to say to each other?’

‘I didn’t,’ she said, ‘but I daresay some may come into my head as we go
along. Shall we start? Help me into my coat.’

‘What a jolly thing,’ he said, wrapping her in it with joyful care. He
knew nothing about women’s clothes, but he did feel that this was
wonderful--so soft, so light, and yet altogether made of fur.

‘It’s a relic,’ she said, ‘of past splendour. I used to be well off. Up
to quite a little while ago. And things like this have lapped over.’

‘I want to know all about everything,’ he said.

‘I’ll tell you anything you ask,’ she answered. ‘But you must promise to
like it,’ she added, smiling.

‘Why? Why shouldn’t I like it?’ he asked quickly, his face changing.
‘You’re not--you’re not going to be married?’

‘Oh--don’t be silly. There. I’m ready. Shall we go down?’

‘I suppose you insist on walking down?’

‘We can go in the lift if you like,’ she said, pausing surprised, ‘but
it’s only one floor.’

‘I want to carry you.’

‘Oh--don’t be <i>silly</i>,’ she said again, this time with a faint
impatience. The evening wouldn’t be at all amusing if he were going to
be silly, seriously silly. And if he began already might he not grow
worse? George, she remembered, used to be quite different after dinner
from what he was before dinner. Always kind, after dinner he became
more than kind. But he was her husband. One bore it. She had no wish for
more than kindness from anybody else. Besides, whatever one might
pretend for a moment, one <i>wasn’t</i> twenty, and one naturally didn’t want
to be ridiculous.

She walked out of the flat thoughtfully. Perhaps she had better begin
nipping his effusiveness in the bud a little harder, whenever it cropped
up. She had nipped, but evidently not hard enough. Perhaps the simplest
way--and indeed all his buds would be then nipped for ever at
once--would be to tell him at dinner about Virginia. If seeing her as he
had now done in full daylight hadn’t removed his misconceptions, being
told about Virginia certainly would. Only--she hadn’t wanted to yet; she
had wanted for this one evening to enjoy the queer, sweet, forgotten
feeling of being young again, of being supposed to be young; which
really, if one felt as young as she quite often very nearly did,
amounted to the same thing.

‘You’re not angry with me?’ he said, catching her up, having been
delayed on the stairs by Mrs. Mitcham who had pursued him with his
forgotten coat.

She smiled. ‘No, of course not,’ she said; and for a moment she forgot
his misconceptions, and patted his arm reassuringly, because he looked
so anxious. ‘You’re giving me a lovely treat. We’re going to enjoy our
evening thoroughly,’ she said.

‘And what are you giving <i>me</i>?’ he said--how adorable of her to pat him;
and yet, and yet--if she had been shy she wouldn’t have. ‘Aren’t you
giving me the happiest evening of my whole life?’

‘Oh,’ she said, shaking her head, ‘we mustn’t talk on different levels.
When I say something ordinary you mustn’t answer’--she laughed--‘with a
shout. If you do, the conversation will be trying.’

‘But how can I help what you call shouting when I’m with you at last,
after having starved, starved----’

‘Oh,’ she interrupted quickly, putting her hands up to her ears, ‘you
wouldn’t like it, would you, if I went deaf?’

He must go slower. He knew he must. But how go slower? He must hold on
to himself tightly. But how? How? And in another minute they would be
shut up close and alone in one of those infernal taxis.... Perhaps they
had better go by tube; yet that seemed a poor way of taking a woman out
to dinner. No, he couldn’t possibly do that. Better risk the taxi, and
practise self-control.

‘You know,’ she said when they were in it,--fortunately it was a very
fast one and would soon get there--‘only a few days ago you used to sit
at <i>The Immortal Hour</i> all quiet and good, and never say anything except
intelligent things about Celts. Now you don’t mention Celts, and don’t
seem a bit really intelligent. What has happened to you?’

‘You have,’ he said.

‘That can’t be true,’ she reasoned, ‘for I haven’t seen you for nearly a
week.’

‘That’s why,’ he said. ‘But look here, I don’t want to say things
that’ll make you stop your ears up again, and I certainly shall if we
don’t talk about something quite--neutral.’

‘Well, let’s. What is neutral enough?’ she smiled.

‘I don’t believe there’s anything,’ he said, thinking a moment. ‘There’s
nothing that wouldn’t lead me back instantly to you. There’s nothing in
the whole world that doesn’t make me think of you. Why, just the paving
stones--you walked on them. Just the shop-windows--Catherine has looked
into these. Just the streets--she has passed this way. Now don’t, don’t
stop up your ears--please don’t. Do listen. You see, you fill the
world--oh <i>don’t</i> put your fingers in your ears----’

‘I wasn’t going to,’ she said. ‘I was only just thinking that I believe
I’m going to have a headache.’

‘A headache?’

‘One of my headaches.’

‘Oh no--not really?’

He was aghast.

‘You’ll be all right when you’ve had some food,’ he said. ‘Are they bad?
Do you get bad ones?’

‘Perhaps if we don’t talk for a little while----’ she murmured,
shutting her eyes.

He went as dumb as a fish. His evening ... it would be too awful if it
were spoiled, if she had to go home....

She sat in her corner, her eyes tight shut.

He sat stiff in his, as if the least movement might shake the taxi and
make her worse, stealing anxious looks at her from time to time.

She didn’t speak again, nor did he.

In this way they reached the restaurant, and as he helped her out, his
alarmed eyes on her face, she smiled faintly at him and said she thought
it was going to be all right. And to herself she said, ‘At dinner I’ll
tell him about Virginia.’




VI


But she was weak; it was such fun; she couldn’t spoil it; not for this
one evening.

There were the roses, sisters to the roses in her room, making the table
a thing apart and cared for among the flock of tables decorated
cynically with a sad daffodil or wrinkled tulip stuck in sprigs of box
and fir; and there the welcoming head waiter, himself hovering over the
proper serving of dishes which all seemed to be what she chanced to like
best, and there sat Christopher opposite her, flushed with happiness and
so obviously adoring that the other diners noticed it and sent frequent
discreet glances of benevolent and sympathetic interest across to their
corner, and nobody seemed to think his attitude was anything but
natural, for she couldn’t help seeing that the glances, after dwelling
benevolently on him, dwelt with equal benevolence on her. It was too
funny. It wouldn’t have been human not to like it; and whatever
misconception it was based on, and however certainly it was bound to
end, while it lasted it was--well, amusing.

On the wall to her left was a long strip of looking-glass, and she
caught sight of herself in it. No, she didn’t seem old,--not unsuitably
old, even for Christopher; in fact not old at all. It was really rather
surprising. When did one begin? True, the rose-coloured lights were
very kindly in this restaurant, and besides, she was amused and enjoying
herself, and amusement and enjoyment do for the time hide a lot of
things in one’s face, she reflected. What would Stephen say if he saw
her at this moment?

She looked up quickly at Christopher, the thought laughing in her eyes;
but meeting his, fixed on her face in adoration, the thought changed to:
What would Stephen say if he saw Christopher?--and the laughter became a
little uneasy. Well, she couldn’t bother about that to-night; she would
take the good the gods were providing. There was always to-morrow, and
to-morrow and to-morrow to be dusty and dim in. For the next two hours
she was Cinderella at the ball; and afterwards, though there would be
the rags, all the rags of all the years, still she would have been at
the ball.

‘What are you laughing at?’ asked Christopher, himself one large laugh
of joy.

‘I was wondering what Stephen--your friend Stephen--would say if he saw
us now.’

‘Poor old Jack-in-the-Box,’ said Christopher with easy irreverence. ‘I
suppose he’d think us worldly.’

She leaned forward. ‘What?’ she asked, her face rippling with a mixture
of laughter and dismay, ‘what was it you called him?’

‘I said poor old Jack-in-the-Box. So he is. I saw him in his box on
Sunday at St. Paul’s. I went, of course. I’d go anywhere on the chance
of seeing you. And there he was, poor old back number, gassing away
about love. What on earth he thinks <i>he</i> knows about it----’

‘Perhaps----’ She hesitated. ‘Perhaps he knows a great deal. He has
got’--she hesitated again--‘he has got a quite young wife.’

‘Has he? Then he ought to be ashamed of himself. Old bone.’

She stared at him. ‘Old what?’ she asked.

‘Bone,’ said Christopher. ‘You can’t get love out of a bone.’

‘But--but he loves her very much,’ she said.

‘Then he’s a rocky old reprobate.’

‘Oh Christopher!’ she said, helplessly.

It was the first time she had called him that, and it came out now as a
cry, half of rebuke, half of horrified amusement; but in whatever form
it came out the great thing to his enchanted ears was that it had got
out, for from that to Chris would be an easy step.

‘Well, so he is. He shouldn’t at that age. He should pray.’

‘Oh Christopher!’ cried Catherine again. ‘But she loves him too.’

‘Then she’s a nasty girl,’ said Christopher stoutly; and after staring
at him a moment she went off into a fit of laughter, and laughed in the
heavenly way he had already seen her laugh once before--yes, that was
over Stephen too--so it was; Stephen seemed a sure draw--with complete
abandonment, till she had to pull out her handkerchief to wipe her eyes.

‘I don’t mind your crying that sort of tears,’ said Christopher
benignly, ‘but I won’t have any others.’

‘Oh,’ said Catherine, trying to recover, diligently wiping her eyes,
‘oh, you’re so funny--you’ve no idea how funny----’

‘I can be funnier than that,’ said Christopher proudly, delighted that
he could make her laugh.

‘Oh, don’t be--don’t be--I couldn’t bear it. I haven’t laughed like this
since--I can’t remember when. Not for years, anyhow.’

‘Was George at all like his furniture?’

‘His furniture?’

‘Well, you’re not going to persuade me that that isn’t George’s, all
that solemn stuff in your drawing-room. Was he like that? I mean,
because if he was naturally you didn’t laugh much.’

‘Oh--poor darling,’ said Catherine quickly, leaving off laughing.

He had been tactless. He had been brutal. He wanted to throw himself at
her feet. It was the champagne, of course; for in reality he had the
highest opinion of George, who not only was so admirably dead but also
had evidently taken great care of Catherine while he wasn’t.

‘I say, I’m most awfully sorry,’ he murmured, deeply contrite,--whatever
had possessed him to drag George into their little feast? ‘And I like
George most awfully. I’m sure he was a thoroughly decent chap. And he
can’t help it if he’s got a bit crystallised,--in his furniture, I mean,
and still hangs round----’

His voice trailed out. He was making it worse. Catherine’s face, bent
over her plate, was solemn.

Christopher could have bitten out his tongue. He was amazed at his own
folly. Had ever any man before, he asked himself distractedly, dragged
in the deceased husband on such an occasion? No kind of husband, no kind
at all, could be mentioned with profit at a little party of this nature,
but a deceased one was completely fatal. At one stroke Christopher had
wiped out her gaiety. Even if she hadn’t been fond of George, she was
bound in decency to go solemn directly he was brought in. But she was
fond of him; he was sure she was; and his own folly in digging him up at
such a moment was positively fantastic. He could only suppose it must be
the champagne. Impatiently he waved the waiter away who tried to give
him more, and gazed at Catherine, wondering what he could say to get her
to smile again.

She was looking thoughtfully at her plate. Thinking of George, of
course, which was absolute waste of the precious, precious time, but
entirely his own idiotic fault.

‘Don’t,’ he murmured beseechingly.

She lifted her eyes, and when she saw his expression she couldn’t help
smiling a little, it was such intense, such concentrated entreaty.
‘Don’t what?’ she asked.

‘Don’t think,’ he begged. ‘Not now. Not here. Except about us.’

‘But,’ she said, ‘that’s exactly what I was doing till----’

‘I know. I’m a fool. I can’t help somehow blurting things out to you.
And yet if you only knew the things I’ve by a miracle managed <i>not</i> to
blurt. Why, as if I didn’t know this is no place for George----’

Again. He had done it again. He snapped his mouth to, pressing his lips
tight together, and could only look at her.

‘Perhaps,’ said Catherine smiling, for really he had the exact
expression of an agonisedly apologetic dog, ‘we had better talk about
George and get it over. I should hate to think he was something we
didn’t mention.’

‘Well, don’t talk about him much then. For after all,’ pleaded
Christopher, ‘I didn’t ask <i>him</i> to dinner.’ And having said this he
fell into confusion again, for he couldn’t but recognise it as tactless.

Apparently--how grateful he was--she hadn’t noticed, for her face became
pensively reminiscent (imagine it, he said to himself, imagine having
started her off on George when things had been going so happily!) and
she said, breaking up her toast into small pieces and looking, he
thought, like a cherub who should, in the autumn sunshine, contemplate a
respectable and not unhappy past,--how, he wondered, did a comparison
with autumn sunshine get into his head?--she said, breaking up her
toast, her eyes on her plate, ‘George was very good to me.’

‘I’m sure he was,’ said Christopher. ‘<i>Any</i> man----’

‘He took immense care of me.’

‘I’m sure he did. <i>Any</i> man----’

‘While he was alive.’

‘Yes--while he was alive, of course,’ agreed Christopher; and remarked
that he couldn’t very well do it while he wasn’t.

‘But that’s just what he tried to do. That’s just what he thinks--oh,
poor darling, I don’t know if he’s able to think now, but it’s what he
<i>did</i> think he had done.’

‘What did he think he had done?’

‘Arranged my future as carefully as he was accustomed to arrange my
present. You see, he was very fond of me----’

‘<i>Any</i> man----’

‘And he was obsessed by a fear that somebody might want to’--her face,
to his relief, broke into amusement again--‘might want to marry me.’

‘<i>Any</i> man----’ began Christopher again, with the utmost earnestness.

‘Oh, but listen,’ she said, making a little gesture. ‘Listen. He never
thought he’d die--not for ages, anyhow. One doesn’t. So he naturally
supposed that by the time he did I’d be too old for anybody to want to
marry me for what’--her eyes were smiling--‘is called myself. George was
rich, you see.’

‘Yes, I’ve been imagining him rich.’

‘So he thought he’d keep me happy and safe from being a prey to wicked
men only wanting money, by making me poor.’

‘I see. Sincerely anxious for your good.’

‘Oh, he was, he was. He loved me devotedly.’

‘And are you poor?’

‘Very.’

‘Then why do you live in Hertford Street?’

‘Because that was his flat when he had to come up on business, and was
just big enough for me, he thought. Where we really lived was in the
country. It was beautiful there,--the house and everything. He left all
that in his will to--to another relation, and nearly all his money of
course, so as to keep it up properly, besides so as to protect me, and I
got the flat, just as it is, for my life, with the rent paid out of the
estate, and the use of the furniture and a little money--enough, he
thought, for me by myself and one servant, but not enough to make me
what he called a prey to some rascally fortune-hunter in my old age.’

She smiled as she used George’s phrase; how well she remembered his
saying it, and things like it.

‘What a cautious, far-seeing man,’ remarked Christopher, his opinion of
George not quite what it was.

‘He loved me very much,’ said Catherine simply.

‘Yes--and whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth,’ said Christopher. ‘As no
doubt Stephen has pointed out.’

‘Well, but when George made his will, five hundred a year and no rent to
pay at all and all the furniture to use, wasn’t in the least chastening
for one woman by herself,’ she said.

‘Five hundred? Why, I’ve got nearly double that, and I feel as poor as a
rat!’ exclaimed Christopher.

‘Yes, but when George made his will it was worth much more.’

‘Was it? Why, when did he make his will?’

And Catherine, suddenly realising that in another moment at this rate
she would inevitably tumble right into Virginia, paused an instant, and
then said, ‘Before he died, of course----’ and refused after that to
say another word about him.




VII


Well, Christopher didn’t want her to; he was only too glad that she
wouldn’t go on. He now thought of George as a narrow man, with a head
shaped like a box and a long upper lip. But she had been right to bring
him out and air him conversationally, once he had been thrust between
them by his own incredible idiocy, and it did seem to have quieted poor
old George down a bit, for he didn’t again leap up unbidden to
Christopher’s tongue. His ghost was laid. The dinner proceeded without
him; and they had begun it so early that, even drawn out to its utmost
limit of innumerable cigarettes and the slowest of coffee-drinking and
sipping of unwanted liqueurs, it couldn’t be made to last beyond nine
o’clock. What can you expect if you will begin before seven, thought the
head waiter, watching the gentleman’s desperate efforts to stay where he
was. Impossible to take her home and be parted from her before ten. It
would be dreadful enough to have to at eleven, but the sheer
horribleness of ten flashed an inspiration into Christopher’s mind: they
would go to <i>The Immortal Hour</i> for whatever was left of it.

So they went, and were in time for the love scene, as well as for the
whole of the last act.

Now, indeed, was Christopher perfectly happy, as he sat beside Catherine
in the thrice-blessed theatre where they had first met and compared the
past with the present. Only a week ago they were there,--together
indeed, but met as usual without his being sure they were going
to meet, and he hadn’t even known where she lived. They were
strangers,--discussing, as strangers would on such an occasion, the
Celtic legends; and George, and Stephen, and the Hertford Street
drawing-room, and even Ned in his car and the fluttering Fanshawes, now
such vivid permanences in his mind, were still sleeping, as far as he
was concerned, in the womb of time. Only a week ago and he had never
touched her, never shaken hands, never said anything at all to her that
could be considered--well, personal. Now he had said many such things;
and although she had been restive over some of them, and although he
knew he must proceed with such prudence as he could manage, yet please
God, he told himself, he’d say many more of them before another week had
passed.

There they sat together, after dining together, and there before her
eyes on the stage was a lesson going on in how most beautifully to make
love. He knew she always thrilled to that scene. Did she, he wondered,
even vaguely take the lesson to heart? Did she at all, even dimly,
think, ‘How marvellous to do that too’? Well, he would bring her
steadily to this place, not leave it to chance any more, but go and
fetch her and bring her to seats taken beforehand, bring her till it did
get through to her consciousness that here was not only an exquisite
thing to watch other people doing, but to go home and do oneself. How
long would it take to get her to that stage? He felt so flaming with
will, so irresistible in his determination, that he never doubted she
would get there; but it might take rather a long time, he thought,
glancing sideways at the little untouchable, ungetatable thing, sitting
so close to him and yet so completely removed. If once she loved him, if
once he could make her begin to love him, then he felt certain she would
love him wonderfully, with a divine extravagance.... He would make her.
He could make her. She wouldn’t be able to resist such a great flame of
love as his.

When it was over she said she wanted to walk home.

‘You can’t walk, it’s too far,’ he said; and signalled to a taxi.

She took no notice of the taxi, and said they would walk part of the
way, and then pick up an omnibus.

‘But you’re tired, you’re tired--you can’t,’ he implored; for what a
finish to his evening, to trudge through slums and then be jolted in a
public conveyance. If only it were raining, if only it weren’t such an
odiously dry fine night!

‘I’m not tired,’ she said, while the merciless lights outside the
theatre made her look tired to ghastliness, ‘and I want to walk through
the old Bloomsbury squares. Then we can get an omnibus in Tottenham
Court Road. See,’ she finished, smiling up at him, ‘how well I know the
ropes of the poor.’

‘What I see is how badly you need some one to take care of you,’ he
said, obliged to do what she wanted, and slouching off beside her, while
she seemed to be walking very fast because she took two steps to his
one.

‘Mrs. Mitcham takes the most careful care of me.’

‘Oh--Mrs. Mitcham. I mean some one with authority. The authority of
love.’

There was a pause. Then Catherine said softly, ‘I’ve had such a pleasant
evening, such a charming evening, and I should hate it to end up with
one of my headaches.’

‘Why? Why?’ he asked, at once anxious. ‘Do you feel like that again?’

‘I do rather.’

‘Then you’ll certainly go home in a taxi,’ he said, looking round for
one.

‘Oh, no--a taxi would be fatal,’ she said quickly, catching his arm as
he raised it to wave to a distant rank. ‘They shake me so. I shall be
all right if we walk along--quietly, not talking much.’

‘Poor little thing,’ he said looking down at her, flooded with
tenderness and drawing her hand through his arm.

‘Not at all a poor little thing,’ she smiled. ‘I’ve been very happy this
evening, and don’t want to end badly. So if you’ll just not talk--just
walk along quietly----’

‘I insist on your taking my arm, then,’ he said.

‘I will at the crossings,’ said Catherine, who had drawn her hand out as
soon as he had drawn it in.

In this way, first on their feet, and then at last, for walking in the
silent streets was anyhow better than being in an omnibus and he went on
and on till she was really tired, in an omnibus, and then again walking,
they reached Hertford Street, and good-night had to be said in the
presence of the night porter.

What an anti-climax, thought Christopher, going home thwarted, and
bitterly disappointed at having been done out of his taxi-drive at the
end.

‘Next time I see him,’ thought Catherine, rubbing the hand he had lately
shaken, ‘I’ll have to tell him about Virginia. It isn’t fair....’

Next time she saw him was the very next day,--a fine Saturday, on which
for the second time running he didn’t go down to his expectant uncle in
Surrey. Instead, having telegraphed to him, he arrived at Hertford
Street in a carefully chosen open taxi directly after lunch, when she
would be sure to be in if she were not lunching somewhere, and picked
her up, carrying her off before she had time to think of objections, to
Hampton Court to look at the crocuses and have tea at the Mitre.

It was fun. The sun shone, the air was soft, spring was at every street
corner piled up gorgeously in baskets, everybody seemed young and gay,
everybody seemed to be going off in twos, laughing, careless, just
enjoying themselves. Why shouldn’t she just enjoy herself too? For this
once? The other women--she had almost said the other girls, but pulled
herself up shocked--who passed on holiday bent, each with her man,
lightly swept her face and Christopher’s with a sort of gay recognition
of their brotherhood and sisterhood, all off together for an afternoon’s
happiness, and when the taxi pulled up in a block of traffic in
Kensington High Street, a flower-seller pushed some violets over the
side and said, ‘Sweet violets, Miss?’ Oh, it was fun. And Christopher
had brought a rug, and tucked her up with immense care, and looked so
happy, so absurdly happy, that she couldn’t possibly spoil things for
him.

She wouldn’t spoil things. Next time she saw him would be heaps soon
enough to tell him about Virginia; and on a wet day, not on a fine
spring afternoon like this. A wet day and indoors: that was the time and
place to tell him. Of course if he became very silly she would tell him
instantly; but as long as he wasn’t--and how could he be in an open
taxi?--as long as he was just happy to be with her and take her out and
walk her round among crocuses and give her tea and bring her home again
tucked in as carefully as if she were some extraordinarily precious
brittle treasure, why should she interfere? It was so amusing to be a
treasure,--yes, and so sweet. Let her be honest with herself--it was
sweet. She hadn’t been a treasure, not a real one, not the kind for whom
things are done by enamoured men, for years,--indeed, not ever; for
George from the first, even before he was one, had behaved like a
husband. He was so much older than she was; and though his devotion was
steady and lasting he had at no time been infatuated. She had been a
treasure, certainly, but of the other kind, the kind that does things
for somebody else. Mrs. Mitcham, on a less glorified scale, was that
type of treasure. She, Catherine, on a more glorified scale, had been
very like Mrs. Mitcham all her life, she thought, making other people
comfortable and happy, and being rewarded by their affection and
dependence.

Also, she had been comfortable and happy herself, undisturbed by
desires, unruffled by yearnings. It had been a sheltered, placid life;
its ways were ways of pleasantness, and its paths were peace. The years
had slipped serenely away in her beautiful country home, undistinguished
years, with nothing in any of them to make them stand out afterwards in
her memory. The pains in them were all little pains, the worries all
little worries. Friendliness, affection, devotion--these things had
accompanied her steps, for she herself was so friendly, so affectionate,
so devoted. Love, except in these mild minor forms, had not so much as
peeped over her rose-grown walls. As for passion, when it leaped out at
her suddenly from a book, or she tumbled on it lurking in music, she
thrilled a moment and quivered a moment, and then immediately subsided
again. Somewhere in the world people felt these things, did these
things, were ruined or exalted for ever by these things; but what
discomfort, what confusion, what trouble! How much better to go quietly
to bed every night with George, to whom she was so much used, and wake
up next morning after placid slumbers, strengthened and refreshed
for----

Sometimes, but very seldom, she paused here and asked, ‘For what?’
Sometimes, but very seldom, it seemed to her as if she spent her whole
life being strengthened and refreshed for an effort that never had to be
made, an adventure that never happened. All those meals,--to what end
was she so carefully, four times a day, nourished? ‘The machine must be
stoked,’ George would say, pressing her to eat, for he believed in
abundant food, ‘or it won’t work.’ More preparations for exertions that
never were made. Nothing but preparations....

Sometimes, but very seldom, she thought like this; then the thought was
lulled to sleep again, lapped quiet by the gentle waves of affection,
devotion, dependence that encircled her. She made people happy; they
made her happy in return. It was excessively simple, excessively easy.
It really appeared that nothing more was needed than good nature. Not to
be cross: was that the secret? As she didn’t know what it was like to
feel cross, to be impelled to behave disagreeably or to want to
criticise anybody, it was all very easy. Wherever she was there seemed
to gather round her a most comfortable atmosphere of sunny calm. So, she
sometimes but very seldom thought, do vegetables flourish in
well-manured kitchen gardens.

George called her throughout his life his little comfort. He had no
trouble with her, ever. His gratitude for this increased as he grew
busier and richer and had to be more and more away from home. To think
of his Catherine, safe and contented, waiting affectionately down in the
country for his return, looking forward, thinking of him, depending on
him for all her comforts as he depended on her for all his joy, filled
him with a satisfaction that never grew stale. His only fear was lest
she should marry disastrously after he was dead. He was so much older.
It was bad to be so much older, and in all likelihood have to
die and leave her. He did what he could to save her by a most
carefully-thought-out will; and when the horrid moment arrived and he
was forced to go, at least he knew his wing would still, in a way,
stretch protectingly over her little head, that he had made her safe
from predatory fortune-hunters by making her poor. The last thing he
did, the very last thing, was solemnly to bless and thank her; and then
with extremest reluctance, for it was a miserable thing to have to do,
George died.

But she didn’t think much about him that afternoon at Hampton Court. He
belonged to so long ago by now--ten years since his death; and
Christopher was careful not to say anything this time that might set her
off in widow-reveries. Nothing here reminded her of George. They had
never been here together. He had never in his life taken her off like
this, for an unpremeditated excursion, in a taxi, to tea at an inn. Of
course he hadn’t. He was her husband. Husbands didn’t. Why should they?
When she and George had wanted airing, they had gone out in their car;
when they had wanted tea, they had had it in their drawing-room; when,
and if, they had wanted crocuses, they had admired them either from the
window or from the safe dryness of a gravel path.

How old she had been then compared to now! She laughed up at
Christopher, who was leading her very fast by the elbow along wet paths
shining in the sun, where the earth and grass smelt so good after
London, out to lawns flung over with their little lovely coat of spring,
their blue and gold and purple embroidered coat; and he laughed back at
her, not asking why she laughed, nor knowing why he laughed, except that
this was bliss.

The times that Christopher on this occasion managed not to seize her in
his arms and tell her how frantically he loved her were not to be
counted. He began counting them, but had to leave off, there were so
many. His self-control amazed him. True he was terrified of offending
her, but his terror was as nothing compared to his love. The wind on the
drive down had whipped colour into her face, and though her eyes, her
dear beautiful grey eyes, homes of kindness and reassurance, still had
that pathetic tiredness, she looked gayer and fresher than he had yet
seen her. She laughed, she talked, she was delighted with all she saw,
she was evidently happy,--happy with him, happy to spend an afternoon
alone with him.

They had the cheerfullest tea in a window of the Mitre, and compared to
them the other people at the other tables were solemn and bored. Not
that they saw any other people; at least Christopher didn’t, for he saw
only Catherine, and he ate watercress and jam and radishes and
rock-cakes quite unconsciously, drinking in every word she said,
laughing, applauding, lost in wonder at what seemed to him evidences of
a most unusual and distinguished intelligence. Once he thought of
Lewes, no doubt at that moment with his long nose in his books, and how
for hours he would prose on, insisting on the essential
uninterestingness and unimportance of a woman’s mind. Fool; ignorant
fool. He should hear Catherine. And even when she said quite ordinary
things, things which in other people would be completely ordinary, the
way she said them, the soft turned-upness of her voice at the ends of
her sentences, the sweet effect as of the cooing of doves he had noticed
the first day, made them sound infinitely more important and arresting
than anything that idiotic Lewes, churning out his brain stuff by the
yard, could ever say. <i>Male and female created He them</i>, thought
Christopher, gazing at her, entranced by the satisfaction, the comfort,
the sense of being completed, her presence gave him. Admirable
arrangement of an all-wise Providence, this making people in pairs. To
have found one’s other half, to be with her after the sterile loneliness
with Lewes and the aridity of his own sketchy and wholly hateful
previous adventures in so-called love, was like coming home.

‘You’re such a little <i>comfort</i>,’ he said, suddenly leaning across the
table and laying his hand on hers.

And she stared at him at this with such startled eyes and turned so very
red that he not only took his hand away again instantly but begged her
pardon.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said, turning red in his turn. ‘I didn’t mean to do
that.’

He mustn’t even touch her hand. How was he going to manage? He wasn’t
going to. He couldn’t. He loved her too much. He must get things on a
satisfactory basis. He must propose to her.

He proposed that evening.

Not in the taxi, because it was open, it rattled, and there were
tram-lines. Also she had gone pensive again, and it frightened him to
see how easily she took fright. If her gaiety had been ruffled aside by
that one brief touch of her hand at tea, what mightn’t happen if he
proposed? Suppose she sent him away and wouldn’t ever see him again?
Then he would die; he knew he would. He couldn’t risk such a sentence.
He would wait; he would manage; he would continue to exercise his
wonderful self-control.

But he wasn’t able to after all.

When they got to Hertford Street he reminded her that she had said she
would go with him that evening to <i>The Immortal Hour</i>, and Catherine,
sobered by having heard herself once more called by George’s pet name,
as if George from his grave were using this young man as a trumpet
through which to blow her a warning of the perils of her behaviour,
thanked him in a subdued and rather conscience-stricken voice, and said
she was too tired to go out again.

Christopher’s face fell to a length that was grotesque. ‘But I’ve been
counting on it!’ he cried. ‘And you said----’

‘Well, but this afternoon was instead. And how lovely it was. I think
for a change even more lovely than <i>The Immortal Hour</i>. Those crocuses
with the sun slanting through them----’

‘Never mind the crocuses,’ interrupted Christopher. ‘Do you mean to say
I’m not going to see you again to-night?’

‘Oh, aren’t you a baby,’ she said, unable not to laugh at his face of
despair.

He was walking up the stairs to her flat beside her, her wrap on his
arm. He had refused to give it to her downstairs, because as long as he
held on to that he couldn’t, he judged, be sent away.

‘Don’t laugh at me,’ he said. ‘It isn’t a bit funny to be separated from
you.’

Her face was instantly grave again. ‘I couldn’t go anywhere to-night,’
she said, taking out her latchkey, ‘because I’m beginning to have one of
my headaches.’

‘And I’m beginning to think,’ he said quickly, ‘that those headaches are
things you get directly I say anything a little--anything the least
approaching what I feel. Look here, I’ll do that,’ he went on, taking
the key from her and opening the door. ‘Isn’t it true, now, about the
headaches?’

He was becoming unmanageable. She must apply severity. So she held out
her hand, the door being opened, and said good-bye. ‘Thank you so very
much,’ she said with immense politeness. ‘It has been delicious. You
were too kind to think of it. Thank you a thousand times.’

‘Oh, what an absurd way to talk!’ exclaimed Christopher, brushing away
such stuff with a gesture of scornful impatience. ‘As if we were
strangers--as if we were mere smirking acquaintances!’

‘I have a great opinion,’ said Catherine, becoming very dignified, ‘of
politeness.’

‘And I haven’t. It is a thing you put on as you’re putting it on now to
keep me off, to freeze me--as if you’d ever be able to freeze <i>me</i> when
I’m anywhere near you!’

‘Good-bye,’ said Catherine at this, very cool indeed.

‘No,’ said Christopher. ‘Don’t send me away. It’s so early. It isn’t
seven yet. Think of all the hours till I see you again.’

‘What I do think,’ said Catherine icily, for it was grotesque, this
refusal to go away, he was humiliating her with his absurdities, ‘is
that you say more foolish things in less time than any person I have
ever yet come across.’

‘That’s because,’ said Christopher, ‘you’ve never yet come across any
one who loves you as I love you. There. It’s out. Now what are you going
to do?’

And he folded his arms, and stood waiting with burning eyes for the door
to be shut in his face.

She stood a moment looking at him, a quick flush coming and disappearing
across her face.

‘Oh,’ she then sighed faintly, ‘the <i>silliness</i>....’ For she was right
up against it now. Her amusing little dream of resurrected youth was
over. She was right up against Virginia.

‘Well, what are you going to do?’ asked Christopher, defiant on the
threshold, waiting for his punishment. He knew it would be punishment;
he saw by her face. But whatever it was, if it didn’t kill him he would
bear it, and then, when it was over, begin again.

She moved aside and pointed to the drawing-room door. ‘Ask you to come
in,’ she said.




VIII


Christopher stared.

‘I’m to--come in?’ he stammered, bewildered.

‘Please.’

‘Oh, my darling!’ he burst out, throwing down her cloak and coming in
with a rush.

But she held up her hand, exactly as if he were the traffic in
Piccadilly, and remarked, so coldly that all that was left to him was
once more bewilderment, ‘Not at all.’

‘Not at all?’ he could only stupidly repeat.

‘Please come into the drawing-room,’ said Catherine, walking into it
herself. ‘I want to tell you something.’

‘Nothing you can tell me can ever----’

‘Yes it can,’ said Catherine.

Mrs. Mitcham appeared, following them into the room. ‘Shall I light the
fire, m’m?’ she inquired. ‘It seemed warm, and Mr. Colquhoun thought----’

‘Was Mr. Colquhoun here?’

‘Yes, m’m. He’s only been gone a few minutes.’

‘What a pity,’ said Catherine.

‘What a mercy,’ said Christopher.

‘I would have liked you to meet him,’ she said. ‘No, thank you--I won’t
have a fire,’ she added, turning to Mrs. Mitcham, who went away and shut
the door.

‘Why? Why on earth should you want me to meet Stephen?’

‘He would so very nicely have pointed the moral of what I’m going to
tell you,’ she said smiling, for she felt safe again, knowing that
Virginia would bring him to his senses once and for ever.

‘Catherine, if you smile at me like that----’ he began, taking a step
forward.

‘Christopher, it’s my conviction that you’re mad,’ she said, taking a
step backward. ‘I never heard of a young man behaving as you do in my
life before.’

‘I’d kill any other young man who did. And look here--whatever it is you
want to say, let me tell you you may say what you like, and tell me what
you like, and send me away as much as you like, and it’ll have no effect
whatever. I love you too much. I’ll always come back, and back, however
often you send me away, till at last you’ll be so tired of it that
you’ll marry me.’

‘Marry you!’

‘Yes, Catherine. It’s what one does. When people love frantically----’

She looked at him aghast at his expressions.

‘But who loves frantically?’ she inquired.

‘I do. All by myself at present. But you will too, soon. You won’t be
able to help it. It’s the most absolutely catching thing----’

‘Oh, my dear boy,’ she interrupted, shocked at such a picture of
herself, ‘don’t talk like that. It’s really dreadful. I’ve never done
anything frantically in my life.’

‘I’m going to make you.’

‘Oh--oh....’

She was scandalised. She said quickly, ‘I ought to have told you ages
ago about Virginia--when first you began saying foolish things.’

‘I don’t care a hang about Virginia, whoever she may be.’

‘She’s my daughter.’

‘What do I care?’

‘She’s grown up.’

‘She must have grown very fast, then.’

‘Please don’t be silly. She’s not only grown up, she’s married. So now,
perhaps, you’ll understand----’

‘George was married before, then?’ he said.

‘No. She’s my daughter. My very own. So now you’ll understand----’

‘That you’re older than I am. I knew that. I could see that.’

How unaccountable one is, thought Catherine; for when he said this she
was conscious of a small stab of chagrin.

‘But you see now how <i>much</i> older,’ she said.

‘Much! Little! What words. I don’t know what they mean. You’re you. And
you’re me as well. As though I cared for any Virginia, fifty times
married. My business is only with you, and yours only with me----’

‘I haven’t got any business with you.’

‘Shut her out. Forget her----’

‘Shut out Virginia?’

‘Be just you. Be just me.’

‘Oh, you’re absolutely mad.’

‘Catherine, you’re not going to let the fact that you were born before
me separate us?’

She stared at him in astonishment and dismay. Virginia as a cure had
failed. It was at once excessively warming to her vanity and curiously
humiliating to her sense of decency. The last twelve years of her life,
since George’s death, as the widowed mother of a daughter who during
them grew up, was taken out, became engaged and married, had so much
accustomed her to her position as a background,--necessary, even
important, but only a background for the young creature who was to have
all the money directly she married with her mother’s consent or came of
age,--that to be dragged out of this useful obscurity, so proper, as she
had long considered, to her age, and her friends and relations had
considered it so also, to be dragged out with real violence into the
very front of the stage, forced to be the prima donna of the piece of
whom it was suddenly passionately demanded that she should sing, shocked
and humiliated her. Yet, over and through this feeling of wounded
decency washed a queer warm feeling of gratified vanity. She was still,
then, if taken by herself, away from Virginia, who up to three months
before had always been at her side, attractive; she was still so
apparently young, so outwardly young, that Christopher evidently
altogether failed to visualise Virginia. It really was a feather in a
woman’s cap. But then the recollection that this young man was just the
right age for Virginia overwhelmed her, and she turned away with a quick
flush of shame.

‘I have my pride,’ she remarked.

‘Pride! What has pride to do with love?’

‘Everything with the only sort of love I shall ever know--family love,
and the affection of my child, and later on I hope of her children.’

‘Oh Catherine, don’t talk such stuff to me--such copy-book, renunciated
stuff!’ he exclaimed, coming nearer.

‘You see,’ she said, ‘how much older I am than you, whatever you may
choose to pretend. Why, we don’t even talk the same language. When I
talk what I’m sure is sense you call it copy-book stuff. And when you
talk what I know is nonsense, you’re positive it is most right and
proper.’

‘So it is, because it’s natural. Yours is all convention and other
people’s ideas, and what you’ve been told and not what you’ve thought
for yourself, and nothing to do with a simple following of your natural
instincts.’

‘My natural instincts!’

She was horrified at his supposing she had such things. At her age. The
mother of Virginia.

‘Well, are you going to dare tell me you haven’t been happy with me, you
haven’t liked going out with me?’

‘Yes. I did. It was queer--I oughtn’t to have.’

‘It was natural, that’s why. You were being natural then, and not
thinking. It’s natural you should be loved----’

‘But not by you,’ she said quickly. ‘That’s most unnatural. The
generations have to keep together. You would have to be twenty years
older before it could even begin to be decent.’

‘Love isn’t decent. Love is glorious and shameless.’

She put up her hand again, warding off his words. ‘Christopher,
good-bye,’ she said very firmly. ‘I can’t listen to any more foolish
things. As long as you didn’t know about Virginia I could forgive them,
but now that you know I simply can’t bear them. You make me ridiculous.
I’m sorry. I ought to have told you at the beginning, but I couldn’t
believe you wouldn’t see for yourself----’

‘What is there to see except that you are what I have always dreamed
of?’

‘Oh--<i>please</i>. Good-bye. I’m really very sorry. But you’ll laugh over
this in a year’s time--perhaps we’ll laugh over it together.’

‘Yes--when you’re my wife, and I remind you of how you tormented me.’

Her answer to that was to go towards the fireplace to ring the bell for
Mrs. Mitcham to show him out. There was nothing to be done with
Christopher. He was mad.

But he got to the fireplace first. ‘No,’ he said, standing in front of
the bell. ‘Please. Listen to me. One moment more. I can’t go away like
this. Please, Catherine--my darling, my darling--don’t send love
away----’

‘Mr. Colquhoun, m’m,’ said Mrs. Mitcham opening the door; and in walked
Stephen.

‘Why, Stephen,’ cried Catherine, almost running to him, so very glad was
she to see him, so much gladder than she had yet been in her life, ‘I
<i>am</i> pleased!’

‘I was here earlier in the evening,’ began Stephen--and paused on
catching sight of the flaming young man in the corner by the fireplace.

‘Oh, yes--this is Mr. Monckton,’ said Catherine hastily. And to
Christopher she said, ‘This is Mr. Colquhoun----’ Adding, with extreme
clearness, ‘My son-in-law.’




IX


The manner of Christopher’s departure was not creditable. He shouldn’t
behave like that, thought Catherine, whatever his feelings might be. He
pretended not to be aware of Stephen’s outstretched hand, scowled at him
in silence, and then immediately said good-bye to her; and as he crushed
her fingers--she hadn’t time to pull off her rings--he said out loud,
‘The generations don’t do what they should, you see, after all.’

‘I have no idea what you mean,’ she said coldly.

‘Just now you laid down as a principle that they should keep together.’
And he glanced at Stephen.

Stephen and Virginia. Yes; but how absurd of him to compare--

‘That’s different,’ she said quickly and defiantly.

‘Is it?’ he said; and he was gone, and twilight seemed suddenly to come
into the room.

‘What a very odd young man,’ remarked her son-in-law, after a pause
during which they both stood staring at the shut door as if it might
burst open again, and again let in a flood of something molten. ‘What
did he mean about the generations?’

‘I don’t think he knows himself,’ she said.

‘Perhaps not. Perhaps not,’ said Stephen with that thoughtfulness which
never forsook him. ‘At his age they frequently do not.’

She shivered a little, and rang the bell for Mrs. Mitcham to light the
fire. Stephen looked so old and dry, as if he needed warming, and she
too felt as though the evening had grown cold.

But how nice it was to sit quietly with Stephen, the virtuous and the
calm. So nice. So what one was used to. She hadn’t half appreciated him.
He was like some quiet pond, with heaven reflected on his excellent
bosom. She liked to sit by him after the raging billows of Christopher;
it was peaceful, secure. What a great thing peace was, and the company
of a person of one’s own age. But he did look very old, she thought. He
was tiring himself out with all the improvements on the estate he and
Virginia were at work on, besides preaching a series of Lenten sermons
in different London churches, which obliged him to come up for the
week-ends, leaving Virginia, who was not travelling just now, down at
Chickover Manor with the curate to officiate on the Sundays.

‘You are tired, Stephen,’ said Catherine gently.

‘No,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘No.’

How peaceful were these monosyllables; how soothing, after the turbulent
speech of that demented young man.

‘Virginia is well?’

‘Quite well. That is, as well as one can expect.’

‘She must take care of herself.’

‘She does. I was to give you her love.’

‘Darling Virginia. I hope you are dining with me to-night?’

‘Thank you--I should like to, if I may. Did you say that young fellow’s
name was Monckton?’

‘Yes.’

‘Do I know him? Or, I should perhaps say, do I know anything about him?’

‘I don’t think so.’

Stephen sat thoughtful, looking at the fire.

‘A little overwhelming, is he not?’ he said presently.

‘He is young.’

‘Ah.’

He paused again; reflecting, his thin cheek leaning on his hand, that to
be young was not necessarily to be overwhelming. Virginia, the youngest
of the young--what inexhaustible, proud delight her youth gave him!--was
not at all overwhelming.

But Christopher did not really interest him. The world was full of young
men--all, to Stephen, very much alike, all with spirits that had to be
blown off. The Chickover ones, his own parishioners, blew theirs off on
Saturday afternoons at football or cricket according to the time of
year, and the rest of the week it was to be presumed that work quieted
them. Of whatever class, they seemed to Stephen noisy and restless, and
the one he had just seen reminded him of a lighted torch, flaring away
unpleasantly among the sober blacks and greys of the late Mr. Cumfrit’s
furniture.

But he was not really interested. ‘I preach to-morrow at St. Clement’s,’
he remarked after a silence.

‘On the same subject?’

‘There is only one. It embraces every other.’

‘Yes--Love,’ she said; and her voice at the word went very soft.

‘Yes--Love,’ he repeated, still thoughtfully gazing at the fire, his
cheek on his hand.

His subject on these Lenten Sundays was Love. After having preached not
particularly well all his life on other subjects, since his marriage he
had begun to preach remarkably well on this one. He knew what he was
talking about. He loved Virginia, and had only been married to her three
months, and his warm knowledge of love in particular burned in a real
eloquence on Love in general. He loved and was loved. The marriage about
which Catherine had had misgivings, because she thought him a little too
wooden--what mistakes one makes--for a girl so young, had been
completely successful. They adored each other in the quiet, becoming way
a clergyman and his wife, when they adore, do adore; that is, not
wantonly at all, in public, but nicely, in the fear of God. And both
were determined to use Virginia’s money only for ends that were noble
and good.

Virginia was like her father--made for quiet domestic bliss. Also she
had never been very pretty, and that too was suitable. The Church has no
use, Stephen knew, for beauty. A beautiful woman married to a clergyman
easily produces complications; for we are but weak creatures, and our
footsteps, even if we are a bishop, sometimes go astray. But she was
quite pretty enough, with lovely eyes, and was so entrancingly young,
besides being such a good little girl, and rich.

Stephen, who was first the curate and then the rector of Chickover,
having been presented to the living by George Cumfrit its patron, who
liked him, had had his thoughtful eye on Virginia from the beginning.
When he went there she was five and he was thirty-four. Dear little
child; he played with her. Presently she was fifteen, and he was
forty-four. Sweet little maid; he prepared her for confirmation. Again
presently she was eighteen, and he was forty-seven. Touching young bud
of womanhood; he proposed to her. Catherine hesitated, for Virginia was
so very young, while Stephen compared to her was so very old; and
Stephen explained that age, difference in age, had nothing to do with
love. Love loved, Stephen pointed out, and there was an end of it. No
objections in face of that great fact could be valid, he said. Seeing
that Virginia returned his love, whatever were their respective ages it
surely had nothing to do with anybody except themselves. Should Mrs.
Cumfrit think fit to refuse her consent she would merely be depriving
her daughter of three years’ happiness, for they would certainly marry
directly Virginia was of age.

Thus, before young men had had time to become aware of Virginia, Stephen
had carried her off. She wasn’t nineteen when he married her. He loved
her with the excessive love of a middle-aged man for a very young girl,
though of course decorously in public. She, having been trained to it
from childhood by him, thought there was no one in the world like him.
He was to her most great, most brilliant, most good. She worshipped him.
Never was a girl so proud and happy as she was when Stephen married her.
Their loves, however, were private. No one was offended by
demonstrations. His mother-in-law, who was of his own age, or even
slightly younger,--one year younger, to be exact--wasn’t made to feel
uncomfortable. Indeed, he had too high an opinion of his mother-in-law
not to wish in every way to please her. She had behaved admirably. With
the whole of the income of George Cumfrit’s fortune at her disposal till
Virginia was either twenty-one or married with her consent under that
age, and able, merely by refusing her consent, to continue in its
enjoyment for another three years, she had relinquished everything with
perfect grace the moment he had convinced her that it was for her
daughter’s happiness. Stephen could not but consider himself the most
fortunate of men. Here, by simply resisting the desire to marry--and he
was a man naturally disposed to marriage--until Virginia had grown up,
he had secured a delightful young wife with money enough to carry out
all his most ardent dreams of benevolence, and a really remarkable
mother-in-law. Indeed, his mother-in-law was exactly what the
mother-in-law of a clergyman should be: a modest, unassuming,
non-interfering, kind, contented Christian gentlewoman. Great had been
his satisfaction when he discovered she was contented. The drop from the
Cumfrit thousands and Chickover to £500 a year and a small London flat
was big enough to unsettle most women. His mother-in-law dropped without
a murmur. She was not in the least unsettled. She remained as kind as
ever. She made no demands at all, either on Virginia or himself. When
they invited her, she went, but not otherwise. When he came to see her,
she welcomed him with the same pleasant friendliness. A kind, quiet
woman, who didn’t mind being poor. St. Paul would have liked her.

He and she presently had the mild meal she spoke of as dinner in George
Cumfrit’s little <i>pied-à-terre</i> dining-room--the most excellent of men,
poor George Cumfrit, ripe in foresight and wisdom--and Stephen invoked
God’s blessing on two cups not quite full of broth, and some scrambled
eggs.

Catherine walked delicately among words with Stephen, and in his
presence called that dinner which to Mrs. Mitcham she called supper, or,
even more simply, something to eat, in order that Stephen, now so
splendidly established in what used to be her shoes, should not be made
in any way to feel the difference his marriage had made in her
circumstances; while Stephen for his part always went out of his way to
praise the quality and abundance of whatever food she gave him, lest she
should perhaps notice that she did not now have particularly much to
eat. Enough, of course; enough, and most wholesome--heavy meals at night
were a mistake. And once, when he had happened to come in when there was
only a milk pudding, he had behaved to it as ceremoniously and as
reverently as he would have behaved to ducks and green peas, of which he
was particularly fond, and said grace over it, and, as it were, carved
it--she liked him to preside--with all the air of pleased anticipation
of a man rubbing his hands before a banquet. Catherine had been much
concerned at his chancing to come in on a milk-pudding night, and had
explained, what was true, that she had not been well, and the pudding
was in the nature of a sanitary precaution; and Stephen had assured her
that a good rice pudding, properly made, was one of the very best of
God’s gifts.

There they sat, then, on this evening of her excursion to Hampton Court,
quietly eating their scrambled eggs and talking of calm things. It was
strange to her to remember that such a few hours earlier she had been an
ostensibly young woman out for the afternoon with her adorer, moving
swiftly, laughing gaily, petted, cherished, of infinite importance. How
unsuitable, how unsuitable, thought Catherine, flushing hotly--‘Yes,
Stephen? Old Mrs. Dymock----?’

‘She is dead at last.’

‘Poor old thing.’

‘A blessed release.’

It had been all wrong, of course. It was merest make-believe. These were
the sober facts of life; this was really where she belonged--‘Did you
say young Andrews? His leg?’

‘Broken playing football.’

‘Poor boy. I am very sorry.’

‘It is his own fault. A rough customer, a very rough customer.’

Now she had entered again into her dim kingdom, in which she negatively
reigned as Stephen’s mother-in-law. He was well disposed towards her she
knew, and so was she towards him; but she also knew they were not
interesting to each other except in their quality of satisfactory
son-in-law, satisfactory mother-in-law. She wasn’t to Stephen a woman;
Stephen was not to her a man--‘But do I remember Daisy? I don’t seem----’

‘She is my mother’s housemaid at the Rectory. She is marrying the cowman
up at Tovey’s farm.’

‘Your mother will miss her.’

‘That is what I fear.’

Virginia had assured her, on becoming engaged, that he was of a
distinguished mind; she knew for herself, since he had begun so
unexpectedly to preach eloquently on love, that he had a tender and
understanding heart; but neither of these things came to the surface and
lit up his conversation when he was with her. Strange dehumanisation of
a human being produced by their relationship....

‘Bathrooms did you say?’

‘In every cottage. And the new cottages are going to have lavatory
basins in each bedroom.’

‘But that is really splendid.’

‘It is my idea, and also Virginia’s, of true religion: Love and
Cleanliness. They go hand in hand. Give the poor the opportunity of
washing--<i>easy</i> washing--there must be no difficulty about it of any
sort, or they won’t--and they will begin to respect themselves. And from
a decent self-respect to a decent courting of a decent girl is but one
step.’

She did feel, however, that George’s will was calculated to make any
son-in-law a little awkward and uncomfortable when with her, and was
very sorry for Stephen. He would of course get used to it soon, but he
had only had three months as yet of Chickover Manor, so tremendously
associated in his eyes, who had lived next door for fourteen years, with
her as its mistress, and she did her best to make him understand by
every sort of friendliness that she was perfectly content. Why, she was
content already; and as soon as she had had time to turn round, and was
really settled in her new life, and knew exactly what she could do with
her income and what she couldn’t, she suspected she was going to be
happier than she had ever been. Because, for the first time, she was
free; and just to be able to do things such as go to <i>The Immortal Hour</i>
as often as she wanted to--George hadn’t cared for music--and see what
friends she liked--George had been happiest when he had her to
himself--and read as much as she felt inclined--George loved her to
listen to him, and nobody can both listen and read--was already most
agreeable, and would go on, as her life developed, becoming more and
more so. Only she mustn’t, of course, behave like a fool. She had
behaved very like a fool, she was afraid, in letting Christopher become
so intimate, and it was her fault that he had dared be so familiar. Yet
who could have dreamed, who could possibly have imagined.... Still,
there it was.

Again she flushed hotly, wondering what Stephen, tranquilly eating eggs,
would say if he knew.

But even if he had been looking at her, his mother-in-law might have
flushed the vividest red and he wouldn’t have seen it, because it is not
what one expects of mothers-in-law. They are not women, of like emotions
to oneself, they are institutions. And if she to him seemed like an
institution, he to her seemed oddly like a public building. A museum; a
temple; a great, cool place through whose echoing emptiness one
wandered. On a hot day, what a relief. These last days for Catherine had
been hot--hot, and disturbing; and she did find it refreshing to sit
like this among Stephen’s shadows. Presently her thoughts faded dim and
quiet. Christopher’s image faded dim and quiet. Presently in the
accustomed atmosphere--George’s atmosphere too had been a quiet one--she
paled down till she matched it. By the end of the meal she was like a
mouse, a grey mouse the colour of her surroundings, sitting unassumingly
nibbling its food.

‘<i>For these and all Thy blessings</i>----’ said Stephen, towering tall and
lean over the empty egg-dish, his eyes closed, his hands folded, his
voice sounding as if it came out of somewhere hollow.

‘<i>Amen</i>,’ murmured Catherine with propriety.

Yes--it was soothing; it was what one knew.

And the evening in the drawing-room continued to soothe. He sat in what
had been George’s chair on one side of the small fire, and she sat on
the big sofa facing him. So had she and George sat when she had come up
from Chickover to go out with him to some unavoidable festivity. If
George could, he avoided festivities; and she, born with that spirit of
adaptability which made her so pleasant to live with, born with that
fortunate and convenient disposition which squeezed its happiness out of
acquiescences, out of what she had, rather than waiting to be happy when
she should have got something else, had gladly shared in his desire to
avoid them. But if they were not avoidable, then she cheerfully came up
to London and supported him; and afterwards, when whatever it was they
had been to was over, with what a sigh of satisfaction did George sink
into his chair before going to bed and rest his eyes on his Catherine
sitting opposite him. He didn’t even like her to take up the evening
paper and glance at the headlines, so much did he love to have her whole
attention. Never did any one listen as sweetly as his Catherine. It was
the best conversation he ever had, George considered, this talk to
Catherine who so sweetly listened. Now she sat opposite Stephen, and
Stephen gazed at the fire and hardly spoke, so that even her talent for
listening was able to rest. Peace, perfect peace, she thought, her head
in the cushions and her eyes inclined to shut.

At nine o’clock Stephen looked at his watch. He had been prepared to
take it out, look at it, exclaim that time had flown, get up, and go.

But time had not flown. Both of them had been supposing it must be ten
o’clock--at least ten, probably much later; so that when he saw it was
only nine he was disconcerted as well as astonished.

He didn’t quite know what to do. To leave so early would not be
respectful, he felt, to his excellent mother-in-law; to hold his watch
up to his ear in order to make sure it hadn’t stopped--it <i>must</i> have
stopped--was an impulse he resisted as discourteous. Yet he wanted to
go away. Whatever his watch declared, he felt it was long past bedtime.

‘Would you like me,’ he suggested, fidgeting in his chair a little, ‘to
say prayers for you and your household before I go?’

‘Very much,’ said Catherine politely, waking up; she was the last person
to baulk any clergyman who should want to pray. ‘Only there isn’t----’

She hesitated, anxious not to seem to complain. She had been going to
say there wasn’t any household; instead, she inquired whether she should
call Mrs. Mitcham.

‘Pray do,’ said Stephen.

Mrs. Mitcham came.

Then it appeared there wasn’t a prayer-book. The prayer-books, both hers
and Mrs. Mitcham’s--it was most unfortunate--had been left behind at
Chickover.

Stephen stood thoughtfully on the hearth-rug. Mrs. Mitcham, with the
expression of one already in church, waited with decent folded hands for
whatever of unction should descend on her. Catherine reflected that she
hadn’t left her furs behind at Chickover, nor her trinkets, and wondered
whether perhaps Stephen might be reflecting this too and drawing his
conclusions.

But Stephen was not. He was merely turning over in his mind what, cut
off from the assistance of the prayer-book, he should say to these two
women as a good-night benediction, and so with grace be able to go back
to his lodging to bed.

The thought of that bed, all solitary and cold, recalled Virginia, and
with her his great discovery of Love. He suddenly raised his hands over
his mother-in-law and her servant--instinctively they bowed their
heads--and with complete simplicity and earnestness bade them love one
another.

‘<i>Little children, love one another</i>,’ Stephen said simply.

It was the best he could do for them, he felt; it was the best that
could be done for any one in the world. Then, abruptly, he wished
Catherine good-night.

‘Do you come to St. Clement’s to-morrow evening?’ he inquired of her.

‘I will certainly come,’ she said.

Mrs. Mitcham helped him into his coat with reverence. She liked having
texts said over her; it gave her a peculiar, pleasant feeling in her
chest. She couldn’t imagine how she had come to forget her prayer-book
and not even notice she hadn’t got it. It must have been the confusion
of Miss Virginia’s wedding, and moving up to London and settling in. She
wrote that very evening to the housekeeper at Chickover, and begged her
to send it to her, and also her mistress’s, at once.




X


By this time it was a quarter past nine; quite early, and yet how late
it seemed. Catherine went back to the sofa, and turning out the light on
the table by her side, for she was being very cautious this first year
of her limited income and not wasting anything, put her feet up and lay
in the firelight, feeling a little tired.

Stephen, as a cool refuge from the warmths of Christopher, had been
restful, but only up to a certain point. He had provided the sort of
relief the cool air of a cellar gives those coming rather blinded out of
the heat of the sun, and, like a cellar, he had presently palled. She
had long ago found, and it had been greatly to her regret, that it was
difficult to keep her eyes open after a short time alone with Stephen.
She thought this must be due to his conversation. There was nothing to
lay hold of in it. It was bony. One slipped off. Besides, he didn’t talk
to her as if she were anything but another bone. Bones to bones; how
dreary; how little one likes being behaved to as if one were a bone. Yet
he knew now about love, and nobody could hear him preach without being
thrilled by his appreciation of it. He appreciated it in his sermons in
all its branches. At present in his life there was only one branch
really living, and that was married love. All those other loves he
praised--brotherly love, which he entreated might continue; the love of
friends, surpassing, he declared, in beauty and dignity the love of the
sexes; that large love of humanity, which needs must well from every
thinking heart--were theories to him. Well, perhaps by sheer talking
about them from pulpits to impressed congregations they would gradually
become real. One did, in a very remarkable way, talk oneself into
attitudes of mind that altered one’s entire behaviour; or was talked
into them by somebody else, which was less excellent--in fact, should be
guarded against.

She shut her eyes. She was tired.

<i>Little children, love one another</i>.... He could say that
beautifully--and how beautiful it was--but he didn’t <i>do</i> it himself.
Except Virginia, the rest of the world was at present left out from
Stephen’s loving. The exhortation had been for her and Mrs. Mitcham, who
had long loved one another in the form of affection and daily mutual
courtesies.

<i>Little children, love</i>....

She was tired. She hadn’t walked so fast or so much for ages as she had
that afternoon at Hampton Court. And the spring air was relaxing. And
Christopher had such long legs, and strode easily over ground that took
her innumerable small steps to cover. And, being clearly mad as well, it
wasn’t only her feet he had fatigued, but her spirit. Stephen, so
passive and indifferent; Christopher, so active and not indifferent
enough; and she between them being agreeable, and agreeable, and for
ever agreeable. Why did a woman always try, however fruitlessly, as with
Stephen, or dangerously, as with Christopher, to be agreeable? She
feared it was, at bottom, vanity. Anyhow it was very stupid, when it was
so tiring, so tiring....

<i>Little children, love</i>....

She dozed; she more than dozed; she went to sleep. And she hadn’t been
asleep five minutes before Christopher came back.

There was her wrap--he hadn’t given her her wrap yet, and found it when
he went out where he had dropped it on the carpet outside her door. In
any case he had meant to wait in the street till that incredible old
son-in-law--that <i>she</i> should dare to try to put him off with stuff
about the generations!--had gone, and then see her again unless it was
very late. But the wrap made it his duty to see her again; and when he
beheld, from the opposite pavement, Stephen emerge and go away at a
quarter past nine, he walked up and down for another ten minutes in case
the old raven should have forgotten something and come back, and then,
the wrap on his arm, went in and up the stairs with all the dignity and
composure that legitimate business bestows.

But he was not really composed; not inside. When Mrs. Mitcham opened the
door at his ring and, still under the influence of Stephen’s exhortation
to love one another, smiled brightly at him, he could hardly stammer out
that he had something of Mrs. Cumfrit’s--her wrap----

‘Oh, thank you, sir. I’ll take it,’ said Mrs. Mitcham.

‘Well, but I want to see Mrs. Cumfrit a minute--it isn’t late--it’s
quite early--I’ll go in for just a minute----’

And thrusting the wrap into her hand he made for the drawing-room.

She watched him shut the door behind him, and hoped it didn’t matter,
her not announcing him. After all, he had but lately left; it wasn’t as
if he were calling that day for the first time. On the contrary, this
was the third time since lunch that he had come in.

She stood uncertain a moment in the hall, ready to let him out again if
he did only stay a minute; then, when he did not reappear, she went back
to the kitchen.

Now Christopher might have behaved quite differently if he had found
Catherine wide awake in her chair, properly lit up, and reading or
sewing. He had meant, in coming back, only to reason with her. He
couldn’t be sent away, cut short in the middle of a sentence and cast
out as he had been by Stephen’s entrance, and not see her again at least
to finish what he had to say. If she wouldn’t listen now, at least they
might arrange an hour the next day when she would. He couldn’t go home
to just black misery. He couldn’t. He was a human being. There were
things a human being simply couldn’t do. He would see her again that
evening, if only to find out when she would let him call and talk
quietly. Surely she owed him this. He hadn’t done anything to offend her
really, except tell her that he loved her. And was that an offence? No;
it was most natural, inevitable and right, he assured his shrinking
heart. For his heart did shrink; it was very fearful, because he knew
she would be angry when she saw him. He could barely get the words out
to Mrs. Mitcham at the door, so short was he of breath because of his
heart. It was behaving as if he had been tearing up six flights of
stairs, instead of walking slowly up one.

Then, inside the room, instead of light, and Catherine looking up from
whatever she was doing at him with surprise and reproach, he found first
darkness, and presently, as he stood uncertain and his eyes grew more
accustomed to it, the outline of Catherine in the dull glow of the
fire, motionless on the sofa. He couldn’t see if she was asleep. She
said nothing and didn’t move. She must be asleep. And just at that
moment a flame leapt out of the coals, and he saw that she was asleep.

The most extraordinary feeling flooded his heart. All the mothers in his
ancestry crowded back to life in him. She looked so little, and helpless
and vulnerable. She looked so tired, with no colour at all in her face.
Not for anything in the world would Christopher have disturbed that
sleep. He would creep away softly, and simply bear the incertitude as to
when he was to see her again. Such an immense tenderness he had never in
his life felt. He knew now that he loved her beyond all things, and far
beyond himself.

He turned to go away, holding his breath, feeling for the door handle,
when his foot knocked against the leg of George’s big chair.

Catherine woke up. ‘Mrs. Mitcham----’ she began, drowsily. And then as
no one answered, for though he tried to he couldn’t, she put out her
hand and turned on the light.

They blinked at each other.

Astonishment, succeeded by indignation, spread over Catherine’s face.
She could hardly believe her eyes. Christopher. Back again. Got into her
flat like a thief. Stealing in in the dark....

She sat up, leaning on her hands. ‘You!’ was all she could find to say.

‘Yes, I had to. I had to bring you back your----’

He was going to shelter behind her cloak, and then was ashamed of such
trifling.

She made a movement to get up, but the sofa was a very low one, and she
rather ridiculously bumped down on it again; and before she could make
another attempt he had flown across to help her.

‘No, no,’ said Catherine, whose indignation was greater than any she had
felt in her life, pushing aside his outstretched hands.

So then he lifted her up bodily, indifferent to everything else in the
world; and having set her on her feet he held her like that, tightly in
his arms, and didn’t care if he had to die for it.

There was a moment’s complete silence. Catherine was so much amazed that
for a moment she was quite still.

Then she gave a gasp--muffled, because of his coat, against which her
face was pressed. ‘<i>Oh</i>----’ she gasped, faint and muffled, trying to
push him away.

She might as well have tried to push a rock away.

‘<i>Oh</i>----’ she gasped again, as Christopher, still not caring if he had
to die for it, began kissing her. He kissed what he could--her hair, the
tip of one ear, and she, aghast, horrified, buried her face deeper and
deeper into his coat in her efforts to protect it.

Oh, the outrage--never in her life--how dared he, how dared he--just
because she was alone, and had no one to defend her----

Not a word of this came out; it was entirely muffled in his coat. Aghast
and horrified, Catherine continued to have the top of her head kissed,
and her aghastness and horror became overwhelming when she realised that
she--no, it wasn’t possible, it <i>couldn’t</i> be that she--that this--that
she was somehow, besides being horrified, strangely shot through by a
feeling that was not unpleasant? Impossible, impossible....

‘Let me go,’ she gasped into his coat. ‘Let me <i>go</i>----’

For answer he took her head in his hands and held it back and kissed her
really, right on her mouth, as no one in her life before had ever kissed
her.

Impossible, impossible....

She stood, her arms hanging by her side, her body quivering. She didn’t
seem able to move. She seemed as if she were becoming every instant more
drawn into this, more absorbed in what was happening--as profoundly
absorbed as he was, as remote from realities. The room disappeared, the
relics of George disappeared, the world disappeared, and all the
reminders of the facts of her life. Youth had swept down out of the
skies and caught her up in its arms into a strange, warm oblivion. He
and she were not any longer Christopher and Catherine--Catherine tied up
in a tangle of relationships, of obligations, of increasing memories,
Christopher an impetuous young man who needed tremendously to be kept in
his proper place: she was simply the Beloved, and he was Love.

‘I worship you,’ murmured Christopher.

Through her dream she heard him murmuring, and it woke her up to
consciousness.

She opened her eyes and looked up at him.

He was gazing down at her--beautiful, all light. She stared at him an
instant, still held in his arms, collecting her thoughts.

What had she done? What was she doing? What was this? Oh, but it was
shameful, shameful....

She made one immense effort, and with both her hands pushed him away;
and before he could stop her, for he too was in a dream, she had run to
the door and flown along the passage to her bedroom and locked herself
in.

Then she rang violently for Mrs. Mitcham, and told her through the shut
door to let Mr. Monckton out--she was going to bed at once--she had a
terrible headache.... And she sat down on her bed and cried bitterly.




XI


Virginia, coming back to the house on Sunday from a short after-luncheon
stroll in the garden, where the daffodils were making a great show and
the blackbirds a great noise, with the intention of putting her feet up
till tea and lying quietly in her boudoir, was surprised to see her
mother standing on the terrace.

Her first thought was of Stephen. Her mother had never yet come
uninvited and unexpected. Was anything wrong with him?

She hastened her steps. ‘Anything wrong?’ she called out anxiously.

Her mother shook her head reassuringly, and came down to meet her.

They kissed.

‘I had such a longing to see you,’ said Catherine, in answer to
Virginia’s face of wonder; and, clinging to her a little, she added, ‘I
felt I wanted to be close to you--quite close.’

She took Virginia’s arm, and they walked back slowly towards the house.

‘Sweet of you, mother,’ said Virginia, who was taller than her mother,
having taken after George in height as well as features; but still she
wondered.

She wondered even more when later on she saw her mother’s luggage. It
suggested a longer stay than any she had yet made. But even as they
strolled towards the house she felt a little uneasy. Her mother had been
so satisfactory till now, so careful not to intrude, not to mar the
felicities of the early married months. Stephen had warmly praised her
admirable tendency to absence rather than presence, and Virginia had
been very proud of having provided him with a mother-in-law he admitted
could not be bettered. She loved to lay every good gift in her
possession at Stephen’s feet, and had rejoiced that her mother should be
another of them. Was there going now to be a difference?

She said nothing, however, except that it was a pity she hadn’t known
her mother was coming, so that her room might have been ready for her.

‘And how did you manage at the station, mother, with nothing to meet
you?’ she asked.

‘I got the fly from the Dragon. I had to wait, of course, but not long.
Old Mr. Pearce was so kind, and drove me himself. I would have let you
know, but I hadn’t time. I--I suddenly felt I <i>must</i> be with you. I had
a longing to be just here, peacefully. It doesn’t put you out, dearest?’

‘But of course not, mother. Only you have missed hearing Stephen preach
to-night.’

‘Yes. I’m sorry. I saw him yesterday, though. He dined with me.’

‘Oh, did he?’ said Virginia, suddenly eager. ‘How was he? How did he
seem? Had he had a good journey up? Did he say anything about the
sandwiches? I’ve got a new cook, and I don’t know if her sand----’

‘Has Mrs. Benson gone?’

‘Yes. We decided she was too expensive. You see, our idea is to cut
down unnecessary expenses in the house so as to have more to carry out
our schemes with, and this is the first time the new one has had to cut
sandwiches. Did Stephen say anything about them?’

‘No; so I expect they were all right.’

‘I do hope they were. He hates restaurant cars, you know, and won’t go
and have a proper lunch in them. And it’s important----’

‘Of course. How are you, darling?’

‘<i>Quite</i> well. It’s wonderful how well I feel. How did you think Stephen
was looking?’

‘Quite well.’

‘Not tired? That journey every week is so tiring. I must say I shall be
glad when Lent is over. Isn’t it wonderful, mother, how he works, how he
gives up his life----’

‘And how very well he is preaching. <i>You</i> have made him preach like
that.’

‘I?’

‘Yes. By just loving him.’

Virginia blushed. ‘But who could help it?’ she asked.

‘And by believing in him.’

‘I think everybody must believe in Stephen,’ she said.

Her mother pressed her arm. ‘Darling,’ she said softly; and thought how
strange a thing love was, how strange that Virginia, by taking this
spinster-man, this middle-aged dry man, and just loving him with all her
simple young heart and entirely believing in him, had made him, so
completely commonplace before in all his utterances, suddenly--at least
in the pulpit--sing. Was it acute, personal experience that one needed?
Did one only cry out the truth really movingly when under some sort of
lash, either of grief or ecstasy?

They went up the broad steps on to the familiar terrace. George’s
peacocks--George had been of opinion that manors should have
peacocks--were behaving as peacocks ought. In the great tubs on each
side of the row of long windows--George had seen pictures of terraces,
and they all had tubs--the first tulips were showing buds. The bells had
begun to ring for afternoon service, and the sound floated across the
quiet tree-tops as it had floated on all the Sundays of all the years
Catherine had spent in that place. Such blameless, such dignified years.
Every corner of them open to the light. Years of clear duties, clear
affections--family years. And here was her serious young daughter
carrying on the tradition. And here was she too come back to it, but
come back to it disgracefully, to hide. She hiding! She winced, and held
on tighter to Virginia’s arm. What would Virginia say if she knew? It
seemed to Catherine that even her soul turned red at the bare thought.

They went into the boudoir, so recently her own--‘I was just going to
rest a little,’ said Virginia. ‘Yes, you must take great care not to
stand about too much,’ said her mother--and Catherine tucked her up on
the sofa, as she had so often tucked her up in her cot, and there they
stayed talking, while the sweet damp smells a garden is so full of in
early spring came in through the open window, and filled the room with
delicate promises.

Throughout the afternoon Virginia talked, and Catherine listened. So it
had always been in that family: Catherine listened. How thankful she was
to listen now, not to be asked questions, not to have it noticed that
she looked pale and heavy-eyed, leaning back in her own old chair, her
head, which ached, on a cushion she remembered covering herself. Her
humiliated head; the head Christopher only a few hours before had held
in both his hands and--no, she wouldn’t, she couldn’t think of it.

Virginia had much to tell of all that she and Stephen were doing and
planning and hoping and intending. Drastic changes were being made; the
easy-going old days at the Manor were over for ever. She did not say
this in so many words, because it might, perhaps, have been tactless,
for were not the old easy-going ways her mother’s ways? But it was
evident that a pure flame of reform, of determination to abolish the old
arrangements and substitute arrangements that improved, helped, and
ultimately sanctified, was sweeping over Chickover. Her father’s money,
so long used merely on the unimaginative material well-being of a small
domestic circle--she didn’t quite put it this way, but so it drifted
into Catherine’s consciousness--was to be spread out like some rich
top-dressing--nor did she say just this, yet Catherine had a vision of a
kind of holy manure, and Stephen, girt with righteousness, digging it
diligently in--across the wide field of the whole parish, and the crop
that would spring up would be a crop of entirely sanitary dwellings. No
one, said Virginia--it seemed to Catherine that it was the voice of
Stephen--could live in an entirely sanitary dwelling without gradually
acquiring an entirely sanitary body, and from a sanitary body to a
sanitary soul was only a step.

‘Stephen said something about that yesterday,’ said Catherine, her
eyelids drooping as she lay back in her chair.

‘He puts it so wonderfully. I can’t explain things as he does, but I’d
like just to give you an idea, mother----’

‘I’d love to hear,’ said Catherine, her voice sounding very small and
tired.

On the table beside Virginia’s sofa were estimates and plans in a pile.
She explained them to her mother one after the other, and the most
convoluted plumbing, set forth in diagrams that looked exactly like
diagrams Catherine had seen of people’s insides, were as nothing to
Virginia. She knew them by heart; she understood them clearly; she could
and did tell her mother things about drains that Catherine would never
have dreamed of left to herself. Lucidly she described the different
drainage systems available, and their various advantages and drawbacks.
No detail of plumbing was too small to be explored. For half an hour she
talked of taps; for another she expounded geysers; and as for plugs,
Catherine had no idea of all the things a plug could do to you and your
health and happiness if you didn’t in the first instance approach it
with care and caution.

She lay back in her chair and listened. It was like listening to water
running from one of Virginia’s newest type of tap. It went on and on,
and only an occasional word, or even a mere sound of agreement was
required of her. Outside, the afternoon sun lit up the beautiful
leafless beeches, and when the bells left off ringing she could hear the
blackbirds again. Blessed, blessed tranquillity. She felt as people do
after an illness--just wanting to rest, to be quiet.

And here she knew she was entirely safe from questions. Virginia never
asked her questions about herself or what she was doing. George had been
like that, too, pouring out everything to her, but not demanding that
she should pour back. What a precious quality this was really, though
she remembered it had sometimes made her feel lonely. How valuable,
though, now. No solicitous questionings embarrassed her. She was aware
she was pale and puff-eyed, but Virginia wouldn’t notice. She couldn’t
have stood her daughter’s young gaze of inquiry. Oh, she would have been
ashamed, ashamed....

Her head ached badly. She hadn’t had any breakfast, in her wild desire
to get away, to escape from Hertford Street before anything more could
happen to her, and the slow Sunday train had offered no occasion for
lunch. But she wasn’t in the least hungry; she only wanted to sit there
quiet and feel safe. Virginia, absorbed in all she had to talk about,
hadn’t thought of the possibility of her mother’s not having had lunch.
The arrival at such an unusual time had surprised her out of her
customary hospitable solicitudes, for she took her duties as hostess of
the Manor with much seriousness, and wouldn’t for worlds have failed in
any of them. Catherine, too, had forgotten lunch. She wanted nothing in
the world but to get here, to sit quiet, to be safe.

While they were having tea, Mrs. Colquhoun the elder, Stephen’s mother,
called in to see her daughter-in-law.

She now lived alone in her son’s abandoned rectory, and daily walked
across the park to inquire how Virginia did. She was immensely surprised
to see Catherine, who had not before arrived uninvited and unprepared
for, but welcomed her nevertheless, for she too had a high opinion of
her.

Nobody could have given less trouble than Mrs. Cumfrit, or been more
sensible in the matter of the marriage. Also, not a breath of gossip or
criticism had blown upon her during the whole long time between her
husband’s death and her daughter’s marriage, when it well might have if
she had been of a less complete propriety and quietness of behaviour.
For, after all, she had only been in the early thirties when poor Mr.
Cumfrit--a heart of gold, that man, but self-made, and not educated at
either Oxford or Cambridge, nor even at a public school, which had been
such a pity for Stephen, who otherwise might have found him more
interesting to talk to--died, and being quite a pretty little thing,
with something really very taking in the way she spoke and looked up at
one, it wouldn’t have been surprising if her name had been coupled from
time to time with that of some man. It never had been. If there were
suitors, the Rectory never heard of them. People came and stayed at the
Manor, but they were all relations--either rather odd ones of poor Mr.
Cumfrit’s, or much more desirable ones of Mrs. Cumfrit’s, whose mother
had been a daughter of the first Lord Bognor. A quiet, decent, well-bred
woman was Mrs. Cumfrit, content to devote herself to her home, her
child, and the doing of kind acts in the parish; an excellent
mother-in-law, tactful and unobtrusive; a good neighbour, a firm friend.
The only thing about her which Mrs. Colquhoun could have wished,
perhaps, different, was her personal appearance: she still looked
younger than the mother of a married daughter should,--though to do her
justice it was in no way, apparently, because she tried to. Well, no
doubt later on, when all the expensive clothes surviving from her
extravagant days had had time to wear out, and she dressed more
ordinarily, in sensible things like plain serges and tweeds, this would
be remedied, and of course each year now would make a great difference.
For Stephen’s sake she ought to look older. People had smiled, Mrs.
Colquhoun knew, at her being his mother-in-law. This seemed to his
mother a pity. She was a little sensitive about it; the more so that
there had been a time when she had secretly hoped Stephen would marry
Mrs. Cumfrit--before, of course, his own splendid plan had dawned on
her, and Virginia was still in socks. But Stephen, wise boy, knew what
he was about, and waited patiently for little Virginia, of whom he had
always been so fond.

The two mothers-in-law met with propriety. They kissed, and expressed
pleasure.

‘This is surely a surprise,’ said Mrs. Colquhoun, looking at Virginia
but with a smile of welcome for Catherine on her face. She was very like
her son--tall and thin, and of an avian profile. She towered above the
small, round Catherine.

‘Yes,’ said Virginia, putting her papers neatly together; Stephen did so
much dislike disorder, and two mothers at once might presently create
it.

‘What brought you down on a Sunday, dear Mrs. Cumfrit?’ asked Mrs.
Colquhoun, sitting on the end of the sofa, and patting Virginia’s feet,
reassuringly to show they were not in her way, and approvingly because
they were, as she daily told her daughter-in-law they should be, up.

Catherine wanted to say ‘A train,’ but discarded this as childish. In
her conversations with Mrs. Colquhoun she was constantly being impelled
towards the simple truth, and constantly discarding it as unsuitable.

She really didn’t know what to give as a reason. She looked at her
fellow-mother-in-law helplessly.

Mrs. Colquhoun was struck by an air of dilapidation about her. ‘Ageing,’
she commented to herself.

‘I had a longing to see Virginia,’ said Catherine at last; and it seemed
a lame sort of reason, in spite of its being true.

Mrs. Colquhoun privately hoped this mightn’t be the first of a series of
such longings, for it was in her opinion essential that a young couple
should be left undisturbed by relations, and especially should they not
be allowed to get a feeling that at any moment they might unexpectedly
be descended upon. It made them jumpy; and what could be worse for a
young married woman than to be made jumpy? For three months Virginia’s
mother had left her most properly alone, only coming down occasionally
for a night, and never without being asked. Was she now going to
inaugurate an era of surprise visits? Stephen wouldn’t like it at all,
and Mrs. Colquhoun couldn’t help feeling, even as Virginia had felt, a
little uneasy. If she had seen the luggage she would have felt still
more so, for it was not, as Virginia had already noticed, the luggage of
a mere week-end.

‘How natural,’ said Mrs. Colquhoun. ‘And dear Virginia will, I am sure,
have been delighted.’

‘Yes,’ said Virginia, removing her pile of papers out of reach of the
jam to which her mother seemed to be helping herself a little
carelessly; Stephen did so much dislike stickiness.

‘But I hope you weren’t worried about her,’ Mrs. Colquhoun continued.
‘She is in very good hands here, you know, and you may be sure that when
her husband is away I look after her--don’t I, Virginia.’

‘Yes,’ said Virginia, anxiously watching her mother, who seemed about
to put her cup down on the top of the pile of papers. She got up, and
quietly drew the table away into safety; Stephen did so much dislike
smudges.

‘Indeed I know that,’ said Catherine politely.

She and Mrs. Colquhoun had always been politeness itself to each other.
She tried to smile as she spoke. She ought to smile. She always did
smile when addressing Mrs. Colquhoun. And she couldn’t. An awful vision
of what Mrs. Colquhoun’s face would change into if she could have seen
her the night before froze her mouth stiff.

‘She looks ill,’ thought Mrs. Colquhoun; and fervently hoped she wasn’t
going to be ill there.

Virginia offered them bread and butter. Mrs. Colquhoun would not eat;
she would just have a cup of tea, and be off again. Virginia mustn’t
think she came there only for what she could get.

Virginia smiled, for this was one of her mother-in-law’s little jokes;
but she was of so grave a type of countenance that even when she smiled
she somehow managed still to look serious. She had strongly marked dark
eyebrows, and her hair was drawn off her forehead and neatly brushed
back from her ears. She looked very young--rather like a schoolgirl in
her last term, dressed with the plainness Stephen and her own taste
preferred. She was not pretty, she was merely young; but what grace,
what charm there was in that!

Her mother-in-law watched her presiding over the massive silver tea
service--George had wished Catherine’s tea service to be handsome--with
proud and affectionate possessiveness. Virginia called both the
mothers-in-law mother--what else was she to call them? Impossible to
address Mrs. Colquhoun by a hybrid like mamma or, even more impossible
and grotesque, mummy--and it led to confusion. For, unless their eyes
were fixed on her face, they couldn’t know which of them she was talking
to. Conversation was constantly being tripped up and delayed by this
when the three were together, and Virginia, who was anxious to be a good
hostess, besides dutifully loving them both, sometimes found this a
strain, and wished she could deal with them separately. Not that, owing
to the rareness and shortness of her mother’s visits, it had often
happened that she had had them at the same time, for on those occasions
her mother-in-law, apprised of the arrival, refrained, as she put it,
from intruding. This had been easy when a visit only lasted from
Saturday to Monday; but if the present one were going to last
longer--and what about all that luggage?--it was not to be expected nor
wished that Stephen’s mother shouldn’t come round as usual.

What she and Stephen’s mother wanted most to know at that moment was how
long Virginia’s mother meant to stay. But no one can ever ask what most
they want to know. What one most wants to know does invariably seem
outside the proprieties, thought Virginia, slightly frowning at life’s
social complications as she ate her bread and butter, thankful that she
and Stephen lived in the country where there were fewer of them.

And Catherine, lying back in her chair--Mrs. Colquhoun never lay
back in her chair unless she was definitely unwell and in a
dressing-gown--didn’t in any way help. She said nothing whatever about
her intentions, and hardly anything about anything else; she merely sat
there and looked dilapidated. Evidently, thought Mrs. Colquhoun,
observing her, she was worn out. But why? One journey by train from
London to Chickover, even by a slow Sunday train, oughtn’t to make a
normal woman look yellow. Mrs. Cumfrit looked excessively yellow. Why?

‘Do have some of this cake, mother,’ said Virginia; and as Catherine’s
gaze was fixed on the open window and Mrs. Colquhoun’s was fixed on
Catherine, they both together said they wouldn’t, thank you; and then,
as usual when this happened, there was a brief upheaval of explanations.

‘And how is the excellent Mrs. Mitcham?’ inquired Mrs. Colquhoun,
pleasantly. ‘How does she like her transplantation from a quiet country
parish to London? Does she take root in Mayfair?’

Catherine said she was as kind as ever, and made her most comfortable.

‘We were sure she would, weren’t we, Virginia. Dear Mrs. Cumfrit, I do
so like to know that you are in clover with that devoted creature to
look after you. And so does Virginia--don’t you, Virginia.’

Virginia said she did, and Catherine said she was.

‘But how does the good soul like it when you leave her alone and come
away?’ inquired Mrs. Colquhoun. ‘Oh well, of course you never do leave
her for long, do you. A day or two--at the outside a day or two, or
really one can imagine her beginning to fret, she is so devoted to you.’

‘Stephen might have stayed in the flat,’ said Virginia, ‘as you’re not
in it this week-end, mother. Poor Stephen--he does get so very tired of
hotels. I wish we had known.’

‘Oh----’ exclaimed Catherine, startled at the picture her imagination
instantly presented of Stephen loose in her bedroom--there were only two
bedrooms in the flat, hers and Mrs. Mitcham’s--sleeping in her bed,
ranging at will among her excessively pretty odds and ends, among all
those little charming things that collect on the dressing-table of a
wealthy man’s adored wife, and naturally don’t wear out as fast as he
does. But she pulled herself up, and after a tiny pause deftly ended
what had so unpropitiously begun with, ‘What a pity.’

‘Perhaps it might be arranged another time,’ suggested Mrs. Colquhoun,
hoping that Catherine would on this let them know whether the next
Sunday was to find her still at poor little Virginia’s. Surely not;
surely, surely she couldn’t suddenly have become, after so much
tactfulness, entirely without any?

But Catherine only said in her small voice, as politely as ever, ‘Indeed
it might,’--and wondered to herself how many more Sundays there were in
Lent. Not many, she thought; Easter must be quite close now; Stephen had
been in London for what seemed to her innumerable week-ends, and Lent,
she knew, only contained six of them. Yet even if there were only one
more, the picture of Stephen in her bed....

Mrs. Colquhoun now saw that only a direct question would extract from
Catherine what she wanted to know, and getting up with her customary
briskness--she was well on the way to seventy, but yet was
brisk--remarked that she really must be going; and having bent over
Virginia and kissed her--‘No, no, don’t dream of moving, my dear child,’
she said--she approached Catherine, who had got out of her chair, and
held out her hand.

‘Shall I see you again, dear Mrs. Cumfrit?’ she asked.

And Catherine, instead of, as Mrs. Colquhoun had trusted she would,
saying, ‘I’m afraid not--I go home to-morrow early,’ only said warmly,
‘Indeed I hope so.’

Which left Mrs. Colquhoun where it found her.




XII


Mr. Lambton came to supper. He was the curate; and, during these Lenten
Sundays of Stephen’s absence, after evening service supped at the Manor.

Mrs. Colquhoun, it transpired, supped on these occasions too, otherwise,
Virginia pointed out, Mr. Lambton couldn’t have supped, it needing two
women to make one man proper. She didn’t put it quite like this, but
that is how it arrived in Catherine’s mind. On this evening Mrs.
Colquhoun didn’t sup because Catherine’s presence made hers unnecessary;
and by absenting herself when she needn’t have, and thus leaving
Catherine to enjoy her daughter’s society untrammelled, gave her
colleague in the office of mother-in-law a lesson in tact which she
hoped, as she ate her solitary meal at home and didn’t like it, for she
hadn’t been expected back to supper and there was nothing really worth
eating, would not be lost.

Mr. Lambton was young, and kind, and full of reverences. He reverenced
his Rector and his Rector’s wife and his Rector’s mother and his
Rector’s mother-in-law; he was ready to reverence their man-servants and
their maid-servants and anything that was theirs as well. He was not
long from Cambridge, and this was his first curacy.

On the quiet surface of the evening he hardly caused an extra ripple.
He was attentive to both ladies, offering them beet-root salad and
bringing them footstools, and afterwards in the drawing-room he brought
them more footstools. Catherine kept on forgetting he was there; and Mr.
Lambton, having established his Rector’s wife’s mother in an easy-chair
out of a draught, and inquired if she didn’t wish for a shawl--having
discharged, in fact, his duty to the waning generation, forgot in his
turn that she was there, and with Virginia discussed the proposed
improvements, going with a quiet relish through all the papers Catherine
had been taken through that afternoon.

Catherine sat in her chair and dozed. She felt just as old as they made
her. With drowsy wonder she remembered this time yesterday, and the
afternoon at Hampton Court, when she had raced--yes, actually
raced--about the gardens, propelled by Christopher’s firm hand on her
elbow and keeping up with his great strides, laughing, talking, the
blood quick in her veins, the scent of spring in her nostrils, the gay
adoring words of that strange young man in her ears. Mr. Lambton must be
about Christopher’s age, she thought. Yet to Mr. Lambton she was merely
some one, perhaps more accurately something, to be placed carefully in a
chair out of a draught and then left. Which of them was right? It was
most unsettling. Was she the same person to-night as last night? Was she
two persons? If she was only one, which one? Or was she a mere vessel of
receptiveness, a transparent vessel into which other people poured their
view of her, and she instantly reflected the exact colour of their
opinion?

Catherine didn’t like this idea of herself--it seemed to make her
somehow get lost, and she shifted uneasily in her chair. But she didn’t
like anything about herself these days; she was horribly surprised, and
shocked, and confused. After all, one couldn’t get away from the fact
that one was well on in the forties, and supposing that there were
people in the world who did seem able to fall in love with one even
then--silly people, of course; silly, violent people--surely one felt
nothing oneself but a bland and creditable indifference? On the other
hand she didn’t believe she was nearly old enough to be planted among
cushions out of a draught and left. It was very puzzling, and tiresome
too. Here she felt almost rheumatic with age. Last night----

The mere thought of last night woke her up so completely and made her so
angry that she gave the footstool an impatient push with her foot, and
it skidded away along the polished oak floor.

Mr. Lambton looked up from the papers he and Virginia were poring over,
and mildly contemplated the figure by the fire a moment, collecting his
thoughts. Something rather vigorous seemed just to have been done. There
had been a noise, and the footstool was certainly a good way off.

He got up, and went across and replaced it under Catherine’s feet.
‘You’re sure you’re quite comfortable, Mrs. Cumfrit?’ he asked, in much
the same voice with which, when district visiting, he addressed the aged
poor--a hearty, an encouraging, a rather loud voice. ‘You wouldn’t like
another cushion, would you?’

Catherine thanked him, and just to please him and make him feel he was
pleasing her, said she thought another cushion would be very nice
indeed, and let him adjust it with care in what he described, evidently
from his knowledge of where his older parishioners chiefly ached, the
small of her back.

The small of her back. She wanted to laugh. All these elderly places she
seemed to have about her--feet needing supporting on footstools,
shoulders needing sheltering in shawls, backs needing propping with
cushions.... But she didn’t laugh; she sat quiet, having nicely thanked
Mr. Lambton, and on the whole did feel very comfortable like that,
cushioned and foot-stooled, and no demands of any sort being made on
her. It anyhow was peace.

Down here she was still simply somebody’s mother, and it was a restful
state. Except for the last three months she had continually in her life
only been somebody’s something. She had begun by being somebody’s
daughter--such a good little girl; she clearly remembered being a good
little girl who gave no trouble, and played happily for hours together
by herself. Then she passed straight from that to being somebody’s wife;
again a great success, again doing everything that was expected of her
and nothing that wasn’t. Then, when this phase was over, for twelve
years she became exclusively somebody’s mother; but how had she not,
when that too ended, stretched out her arms to the sun and cried out all
to herself, ‘Now I’m going to be me!’

Three months she had had of it, three months of freedom in London; and
friends had seemed to spring up like daisies under her feet, and Mrs.
Mitcham was always making tea, and cigarette ends were always being
emptied out of ash-trays, and some cousins she had in London, who had
cropped up the minute she had got there, brought friends, and these
friends instantly became her friends, and it was a holiday, the three
months, a very happy little holiday as different as possible from
anything she had ever known, in which every one she met was kind and
gay, and nobody in any way restricted her movements, and when she wanted
to be alone and go for her solitary enjoyments, such as music, which she
best loved alone, or visits to Kew to see whether spring wasn’t anywhere
about yet, she could be alone and go, and when she wanted to see people
and talk, she could see them and talk, and there was no clash anywhere
of some one else’s opposing tastes and wishes.

A pleasant life. An amusing, independent, dignified small life; opening
out before her with that other life of faithfully fulfilled duties and
expectations at the back of her like a pillow to rest her conscience on.
She hadn’t had time to arrange anything yet, but she certainly meant to
do good as well as be happy, to find some form of charitable activity
and throw herself into it. She wasn’t going to be idle, to drift into
being one of those numerous ex-wives and mothers, unhappy specialists
out of a job, who roam through their remaining years unprofitably
conversing.

All this had seemed to open out before her like a bland afternoon
landscape, and what had she done? Behaved so idiotically that she had
been forced to run away; and not only run, but not know in the least
when she would be able to go back again.

It was most unfortunate that she should have chanced to meet and make
friends with the one young man in, she supposed, ten millions, who could
be mad enough to fall in love with her and was of an undisciplined
disposition into the bargain. Why, he might have been a quite meek young
man--one of those who worship in secret, reverence from afar, one
controlled by a lifted finger or a flickered eyelash. But nothing
controlled Christopher. He was an elemental force, and he swept her with
him--she had certainly been swept somewhere unusual that brief moment
she became so strangely quiescent in his arms. In his arms! Disgraceful.
It rankled. It gnawed. The only thing to do, with such a memory
scorching one, was to take to one’s heels. But imagine at her age having
to take to any such things. The <i>indignity</i>....

Once more the footstool skidded across the shiny floor.

The heads bent over the table turned towards her inquiringly.

‘Have you the fidgets, mother?’ asked Virginia gravely.

‘I think I’ll go to bed,’ said Catherine, getting up from her cushions.

Mr. Lambton hastened across to help. An odd desire to slap Mr. Lambton
seized her. She blushed that she should wish to.

‘But not before prayers?’ said Virginia, surprised.

‘Oh yes--I forgot prayers,’ said Catherine, slightly ashamed.

Virginia, though, was more ashamed. It did seem to her unfortunate that
her mother should have said that before Mr. Lambton. Bad to forget them,
but worse to say so.

She got up and rang the bell.

‘We’ll have them now, as you’re tired,’ she said.

There usedn’t to be prayers in Catherine’s day, because George in his
day hadn’t liked them, and she had kept things up exactly as he had, so
that it was natural she should forget the new habits, besides finding
it difficult to remember that the Manor was really a rectory now, a
place in which family prayers the last thing at night and the first
thing in the morning were inevitable.

In came the servants, headed by the parlourmaid bearing a tray of
lemonade and soda water, and it seemed to Catherine, watching for the
faces of old friends, that they had been much thinned out. They trickled
in where, in old days, if there had been prayers, they would have
poured. Manifestly they were being rapidly exchanged for cottages. There
was hardly one left to smile furtively at her before settling down with
folded hands and composed vacant face to listen to Mr. Lambton.

He officiated in Stephen’s absence. He did it in a clear tenor. The room
growled with muffled responses. Virginia’s voice firmly led the growls.
They all knelt with their faces to the walls and the soles of their
shoes towards Mr. Lambton. Catherine became very conscious of her shoes,
aware that their high heels were not the heels of the absolutely pure in
heart. Before her mind floated a picture she had once seen of a pair of
German boots that had belonged to a German woman who had been wicked,
but, by the time she wore the boots, was good. They were the very
opposite of the shoes she herself had on at the moment, and below the
picture of them was written:

    O wie lieblich sind die Schuhe
    Demuthsvolle Seelensruhe....

She wondered what Mr. Lambton would think of them as outward signs of
inward grace, and, if he thought highly, what would he think of hers?
Ashamed, she collected her wandering thoughts; for the words Mr.
Lambton was repeating were so beautiful that they sanctified
everything--himself, herself, the assembled upturned shoe-soles. She
suddenly felt very small and silly, as though she were one of the
commoner insects, hopping irreverently at the feet of some great calm
angel. She laid her cheek on her folded arms and listened attentively to
the lovely words Mr. Lambton was praying--<i>Lighten our darkness, we
beseech Thee</i>.... How often she had heard them; how seldom she had
noticed them. They were more beautiful than music; they were nobler....

Virginia saw--it was her business to see how the servants behaved, and
her glance naturally took in Catherine too--her mother’s attitude, and
hoped that Mr. Lambton didn’t. The only decent way of praying in a
drawing-room was to kneel up straight, hands folded and eyes either shut
or looking at the seat of one’s chair. Her mother was crouching, almost
sitting, on the floor, her arms resting on her chair, her head laid
sideways on her arms. Mothers oughtn’t to do that. A child who was very
tired might, but it would certainly be reproved afterwards. Fortunately
the servants couldn’t see because of their backs, but Mr. Lambton, if he
raised his eyes, wouldn’t be able not to. She hoped he wouldn’t raise
his eyes. How very keenly one felt everything one’s mother did or didn’t
do. Strange how sensitive one became about her when one was grown up,
and how, in some uncomfortable way, responsible.

Prayers were over in ten minutes, the servants filed out, Mr. Lambton,
having drunk some soda water and said what was proper about his evening,
went away, and Virginia, reluctant to go upstairs to her frigid
solitude, came and stood by the fire warming her hands so as to put off
the melancholy moment a little longer, and talked of Stephen.

‘I do so miss him these week-ends,’ she said, strangling a sigh.

Catherine sympathetically stroked her arm.

‘I can so well understand how much one would miss some one one loved as
you love Stephen,’ she said.

(‘Mother,’ thought Virginia, ‘is really very nice, in spite of her queer
ways.’)

‘You’ve no idea,’ she said aloud, her eyes bright with pride, ‘how
wonderful he is.’

(‘Who,’ thought Catherine, ‘could have imagined it. That solemn old
Stephen.’)

‘I’m so glad,’ she said aloud, putting her arm round Virginia. ‘You know
I used to be afraid--I wasn’t quite sure--whether perhaps the difference
in age----’

‘Age!’

Virginia looked down at her mother pityingly. ‘I wish you understood,
mother,’ she said gravely, ‘how little age has to do with it so long as
people love each other. Why, what can it matter? We never think of it.
It simply doesn’t come in. Stephen is Stephen, whatever his age may be.
He never, never could be anything else.’

‘No,’ agreed Catherine rather wistfully, for if Stephen could only be
something else she might find him easier to talk to.

However, that was neither here nor there. He wasn’t Virginia’s husband
in order to talk agreeably to her mother. The great thing was that he
succeeded in bringing complete bliss to his wife. How right the child
had been to insist on marrying him; how unerring was her instinct. What
had she cared for the reasoning of relations, the advice so copiously
given not only by Catherine herself, but by various uncles and cousins,
both on her father’s and mother’s side? And as for the suggestion that
she would look ridiculous going about with a husband old enough to be
her father, she had merely smiled gravely at that and not even
condescended to answer.

‘I wonder,’ said Catherine, pensively gazing into the fire, her cheek
against Virginia’s sleeve, ‘how much happiness has been prevented by
fear.’

‘What fear?’

‘Of people--and especially relations. Their opinion.’

‘I am sure,’ said Virginia, blushing a little, for she wasn’t used to
talking about these things to anybody but Stephen, ‘that one should give
up everything to follow love.’

‘But what love?’

Virginia blushed again. ‘Oh, mother--of course only the right love.’

‘You mean husbands?’

‘Well, of course, mother.’

Virginia blushed a third time. What could her mother imagine she was
thinking of?

She went on with grave shyness: ‘Love--the right love--shouldn’t mind
anything any one in the world says.’

‘I suppose it shouldn’t,’ said Catherine. ‘And yet----’

‘There isn’t any “and yet” in love, mother. Not in real love.’

‘You mean husbands,’ said Catherine again.

‘Well, of course, mother,’ said Virginia, impatiently this time.

‘I suppose there isn’t,’ said Catherine pensively. ‘But still----’

‘There isn’t any “but still” either.’

Before this splendid inexperience, this magnificent unawareness,
Catherine could only be mute; and presently she held up her face to be
kissed, and murmured that she thought she would now go to bed.

Virginia fidgeted. She didn’t seem to want to leave the fire. She raked
out the ashes for quite a long time, and then pushed the chairs back
into their proper places and shook up the cushions.

‘I hate going to bed,’ she said suddenly.

Catherine, who had been watching her sleepily, was surprised awake
again--Virginia had sounded so natural.

‘Do you, darling?’ she asked. ‘Why?’

Virginia looked at her mother a moment, and then fetched the bedroom
candles from the table they had been put ready on, the electric light
being now cut off by Stephen’s wish at half-past ten each night.

She gave Catherine her candle. ‘Didn’t you----’ she began.

‘Didn’t I what?’

‘Hate going to bed when my father was away?’

‘Oh. I see. No, I didn’t. I--I liked being alone.’

They stood looking at each other, their candles lighting up their faces.
Catherine’s face was surprised; Virginia’s immensely earnest.

‘I think that’s very strange, mother,’ she said; and added after a
silence, ‘You do understand, don’t you, that in all I’ve been saying
about--about love, I only’--she blushed for the fourth time--‘mean
<i>proper</i> love.’

‘Oh, quite, darling,’ Catherine hastened to assure her. ‘Husbands.’

And Catherine, not used to bedroom candles, held hers crooked and
dropped some grease on the carpet, and Virginia had the utmost
difficulty in strangling an exclamation. Stephen did so much dislike
grease on the carpets.




XIII


Stephen came back by the first train next morning, suppressing his
excitement as he got out of the car and on the doorstep saw Virginia,
standing there as usual, in her simple morning frock and fresh neatness,
waiting to welcome him home. Outwardly he looked just a sober,
middle-aged cleric, giving his wife a perfunctory kiss while the
servants brought in his things; inwardly he was thirty at the sight of
her, and twenty at the touch of her. She, suppressing in her turn all
signs of joy, received his greeting with a grave smile, and they both at
once went into his study, and shutting the door fell into each other’s
arms.

‘My wife,’ whispered Stephen.

‘My husband,’ whispered Virginia.

It was their invariable greeting at this blissful Monday morning moment
of reunion. No one would have recognised Stephen who saw him alone with
Virginia; no one would have recognised Virginia who saw her alone with
Stephen. Such are the transformations of love. Catherine kept out of the
way; she went tactfully for a walk. They were to themselves till
lunch-time, and could pour out everything each had been thinking and
feeling and saying and doing since they parted such ages ago, on
Saturday.

Unfortunately this time Virginia had something to pour out which wasn’t
going to give Stephen pleasure. She put it off as long as she could, but
he, made quick by love, soon felt there was something in the background
of her talk, and drawing his finger gently over her forehead, which
usually was serene with purest joy, said, ‘A little pucker. I see the
tiniest pucker. What is it, Virginia love?’

‘Mother,’ said Virginia.

‘Mother? My mother?’

Stephen couldn’t believe it. His mother causing puckers?

‘No. Mine. She’s come.’

‘Come here?’

Stephen was much surprised. And on Saturday night not a word, not an
indication of this intention.

‘Had you asked her?’ he inquired.

‘Oh, Stephen--as though I would without your consent!’

‘No. Of course not, darling. But when----?’

‘Yesterday.’

‘On a Sunday?’

‘Yes. And I’m afraid--oh, Stephen, I do think she doesn’t mean to go
away very soon, because she has brought two trunks.’

Stephen was much moved by this news. He looked at his wife in real
dismay. He considered he was still in his honeymoon. What were three
months? Nothing. To people who loved as he and Virginia loved they were
absolutely nothing, and to have a parent come and interrupt, and
especially a parent to whom the whole place had so recently belonged....
Unfortunate; unfortunate; unfortunate to the last degree.

‘How very odd,’ said Stephen, who till now had regarded his
mother-in-law as a monument of tact; adding, after a pause, ‘Two trunks,
did you say? You counted them, I suppose. Two trunks. That is certainly
a large number. And your mother said nothing at all of this when I dined
with her on Saturday----’

‘I do hope, darling,’ interrupted Virginia anxiously, ‘that you had
enough to eat?’

‘Plenty, plenty,’ said Stephen, waving the recollection of the scrambled
eggs aside. ‘She said no word at all, Virginia. On the contrary, she
assured me she was coming to St. Clement’s to hear me preach last
night.’

‘Oh, Stephen--I simply can’t understand how she could bear to miss
that!’

‘Have you any idea, my love, what made her come down unannounced?’ asked
Stephen, the joy of his homecoming completely clouded over.

‘No, darling. I can’t make it out. It really puzzles me.’

‘You have no theory at all?’

‘None.’

‘Nor any idea as to the length of her proposed stay?’

‘Only the idea of the two trunks. Mother hasn’t said a word, and I can’t
very well ask.’

‘No,’ said Stephen thoughtfully. ‘No.’ And added, ‘It is very
disquieting.’

It was; for he saw clearly what an awkward situation must arise with the
abdicated monarch alongside of the reigning one for any time longer than
a day or two, and also, since nothing particular appeared to have
brought her down, she must have come idly, on an impulse, because she
had nothing else to do,--and to be idle, to drift round, seemed to him
really a great pity for any human being. It led inevitably to mischief.
Fruitful activity was of the first importance for every one, he couldn’t
but think, especially for one’s wife’s mother. But it must take place
somewhere else. That was essential: it must take place somewhere else.

‘Well, perhaps,’ he said, stroking Virginia’s hair, endeavouring to give
and get comfort, ‘in spite of the trunks it will only be for a day or
two. Ladies do take large amounts of luggage about with them.’

Virginia shook her head. ‘Mother doesn’t,’ she said. ‘Each time before
she only brought a bag.’

They were silent. He left off stroking her hair.

Then Stephen pulled himself together. ‘Well, well,’ he said. ‘Come,
come. Whatever it is that happens to us, Virginia love, we must do our
best to bear it, mustn’t we.’

‘Oh, of <i>course</i>, Stephen darling,’ said Virginia. ‘You know I’ll do
whatever you do.’

She laid her head on his breast, and they gave themselves up to those
happy lawful caresses that are at once the joy and the duty of the
married. Exquisite arrangement, Stephen considered, who had been starved
of caresses till middle age, and now, let lawfully loose among them,
found them more delightful than in his most repented-of dreams he had
dared imagine--exquisite arrangement, by which the more you love the
greater is your virtue.

‘After all, my darling,’ he whispered, ‘we have got each other.’

‘Indeed and indeed we have,’ whispered Virginia, clinging to him.

‘My own dear wife,’ murmured Stephen, holding her close.

‘My own darling husband,’ murmured Virginia, blissfully nestling.

Catherine, meanwhile, was hurrying back across muddy fields and many
stiles so as not to be late for lunch. Anxious to leave her
children--was not Stephen by law now also her child? fantastic
thought--to themselves as long as possible, she had rather overdone it,
and walked farther than there was time for, so that at the end her walk
had almost to become a run. Stephen, she felt sure, was a punctual man.
Besides, nobody likes being kept waiting for meals. She hoped they
wouldn’t wait. She hurried and got hot. Her shoes were caked in mud, and
her hair, for the March wind was blowing, wasn’t neat. She hoped to slip
in unseen and arrange herself decently before facing Stephen, but when
she arrived within sight of the house they both, having been standing at
the window ever since the gong went, came out to meet her.

‘Oh, you shouldn’t have!’ she cried, as soon as they were near enough to
hear. ‘You shouldn’t have waited. I’m dreadfully sorry. Am I very late?’

‘Only a quarter of an hour,’ said Stephen courteously--how wonderful he
was, thought Virginia. ‘Nothing at all to worry about. How do you do.
This is an unexpected pleasure.’

‘I hope you don’t mind?’ said Catherine, smiling up at him as they shook
hands. ‘I’ve been impulsive. I came down on a sudden wave of longing to
be with Virginia. You’ll have to teach me self-control, Stephen.’

‘We all need that,’ said Stephen.

He hid his feelings; he contrived to smile; he was wonderful, thought
Virginia.

‘And on my very first day I’m late for lunch,’ said Catherine. ‘I wish
you hadn’t waited.’

The expression ‘my very first day’ seemed to Stephen and Virginia
ominous; nobody spoke of a first day unless there was to be a second, a
third, a fourth, a whole row of days. There was, therefore, a small
pause. Then Stephen said, as politely as if he were a man who wasn’t
hungry and had not had breakfast ever so much earlier than usual, ‘Not
at all’--and Catherine felt, as she had so often felt before, that he
was a little difficult to talk to, and Virginia, who knew how
particularly he disliked being kept waiting for meals, even when he
wasn’t hungry, loved him more than ever.

Indeed, his manner to her mother was perfect, she thought,--so patient,
so--the absurd word did describe it--gentlemanly. And he remained
patient and gentlemanly even when Catherine, in her desire to be quick,
only gave her muddy shoes the briefest rubbing on the mat, so that she
made footmarks on the hall carpet, and Stephen, who was a clean man and
didn’t like footmarks on his carpets, merely said, ‘Kate will bring a
brush.’

Lunch went off very well considering, Virginia thought. It was thanks to
Stephen, of course. He was adorable. He told her mother the news of the
parish, not forgetting anything he thought might interest her about the
people she had known, such as young Andrews breaking his leg at
football, and foolish Daisy Logan leaving her good situation to marry a
cowman and begin her troubles before she need; and afterwards in the
drawing-room, where they had coffee--when she and Stephen were alone
they had it cosily in the study, the darling study, scene of so many
happy private hours--he sent Kate to fetch the plans and estimates, and
went through them with her mother so patiently and carefully, explaining
them infinitely better and more clearly than she had been able to do the
day before, and always in such admirable brief sentences, using five
words where she, with her untrained mind, had used fifty, and making her
mother feel that they liked her to know what they were doing, and wanted
her to share their interests. Her mother was not to feel out in the
cold. Dear Stephen. Virginia glowed with love of him. Who but Stephen
could, in the moment of his own disappointment, think and act with such
absolute sweetness?

Time flew. It was her hour for putting up her feet, but she couldn’t
tear herself away from Stephen and the plans. She sat watching his fine
face--how she loved his thinness, his clean-cut, definite features--bent
over the table, while with his finger he traced the lines her mother was
having explained to her. Her mother looked sleepy. Virginia thought this
queer so early in the day. She had been sleepy the evening before, but
that was natural after the journey and getting up so early. Perhaps she
had walked too far, and tired herself. After all, she wasn’t any longer
young.

‘You see how simply it can be worked,’ said Stephen. ‘You merely turn
this tap--<i>a</i>--and the water flows through <i>b</i> and <i>c</i>, along <i>d</i>, and
round the curve to <i>f</i>, washing out, on its way, the whole of <i>e</i>.’

Her mother murmured something--Virginia thought she said, ‘I’d like to
be <i>e</i>’--and if this was really what she did say, it was evident that
she not only looked sleepy, but was very nearly actually asleep. In
which case Stephen’s pains were all being wasted, and he might just as
well leave off.

‘Not only,’ said Stephen, ‘is this the simplest device of any that have
been submitted, and as far as one can humanly tell absolutely foolproof,
but, as is so often the case with the best, it is also the cheapest.’

There was a long pause. Her mother said nothing. Virginia looked at her,
and it did seem as if she really had gone to sleep.

‘Mother,’ said Virginia gently. She couldn’t bear that Stephen should be
taking all this trouble to interest and inform somebody who wasn’t
awake.

Her mother started and gave herself a little shake and said rather
hastily, ‘I see.’ And then, to save what she felt was a delicate
situation and divert Stephen’s attention from herself--he was looking at
her thoughtfully over the top of his glasses--she pointed to a specially
involuted part of the plan, where pipes seemed twisted in a frenzy, and
asked what happened there, at that knot, at--she bent closer--yes, at
<i>k</i>.

Stephen, simple-minded man, at once with the utmost courtesy and
clearness told her, and before he was half-way through his explanation
Virginia noticed--it was really very queer--her mother’s eyelids
shutting again.

This time she got up a little brusquely; she couldn’t let Stephen’s
kindness and time be wasted in such a manner. ‘It’s my hour for
resting,’ she said, standing gravely at the table, one hand, a red young
hand with a slender wedding ring, resting on her husband’s shoulder. ‘I
suppose I ought to go and lie down.’

Her mother at that moment came to life again. ‘Shall I come and tuck you
up?’ she asked, making a movement as if she were going to accompany her.

‘Sweet of you, mother--but if Stephen doesn’t mind, I thought I’d rest
on the couch in his study to-day. It’s so comfortable.’

‘Certainly,’ said Stephen.

He refrained from calling her his love; he and she both refrained from
any endearments in public,--on principle, as unseemly in a clergyman’s
family, and also because they feared that if once they began they
mightn’t be able to stop, so excessive was their mutual delight, at this
early stage, in lovemaking, and so new were they both at the delicious
game. And, besides this, they were shy, and unable either of them in
their hearts to get away from a queer feeling of guilt, in spite of the
Law and the Church both having shed their awful smiles and blessings on
whatever they might choose to do.

‘Oh, I won’t profane Stephen’s study,’ said her mother, smiling at him.
‘I’ll only just come and tuck you up and then leave you to sleep. Thank
you so much, Stephen,’ she added, turning to him; ‘it has been so good
of you. I think your ideas are marvellous.’

But how many of them had her mother heard, Virginia wondered as, after a
pressure of her husband’s shoulder which meant, ‘Be quick and come to
the study and we can be by ourselves till tea,’ and a brief answering
touch of her hand by his which meant that he’d follow her in five
minutes, she and Catherine walked together down the long, beautiful old
room, while Stephen laid his papers carefully in the wicker tray kept
for the purpose. Very few, surely. Yet her mother spoke
enthusiastically. It did slightly shake one’s belief in a mother who
obviously slept most of the time ideas were being expounded to her, that
she should, with that easy worldly over-emphasis Virginia hadn’t heard
now for three months, that pleasant simulation of an enthusiasm which
Virginia had always, ever since she began really to think, suspected
couldn’t be quite real, declare them marvellous, on waking up.

‘I mustn’t be unfair, though,’ thought Virginia as they went into the
study arm in arm--it was Catherine who had put her arm through
Virginia’s. ‘After all, I explained things yesterday, so mother did know
something of our ideas, even if she didn’t listen to-day. But <i>why</i>
should she be so tired?’

‘Didn’t you sleep well last night, mother?’ she asked, as Catherine
arranged the cushions comfortably for her.

‘Not very well,’ said Catherine, turning a little red and looking oddly
like a child caught out in ill behaviour, thought Virginia.

How strange the way the tables of life turned, and how imperceptibly yet
quickly one changed places. Here was her mother looking just as she was
sure she herself used to look when she was caught out doing wrong things
with the fruit or the jam. But why? Virginia couldn’t think why she
should look so.

‘I shall sleep better when I’ve got more used to the bed,’ said
Catherine, who was unnerved by the knowledge that Stephen’s conversation
did inevitably dispose her to drowsiness, and that Virginia was on the
verge of finding it out.

Used to the bed. Virginia turned this expression over in her mind with
grave eyes fixed on her mother, who was smoothing her skirt over her
ankles.

Used to the bed. It suggested infinity to Virginia. You couldn’t get
used to a bed without practice in spending nights in it; you couldn’t
get used to anything without many repetitions. How she wished she could
be frank with her mother and ask her straight out how long she meant to
stay. But could one ever be frank with either one’s mother or with one’s
guest? And when both were combined! As a daughter she wasn’t able to say
anything, as a hostess she wasn’t able to say anything, and as a
daughter and a hostess rolled into one her muzzling was complete.

Virginia watched her mother gravely as she busied herself making her
comfortable. It was for her mother to give some idea of her intentions,
and she hadn’t said a word.

‘Are you quite comfortable, dearest?’ Catherine asked, kissing the
solemn young face before going away.

‘Quite, thank you. Sweet of you, mother,’ said Virginia, closing her
eyes.

For some reason she suddenly wanted to cry. Things were so contrary; it
was so hard that she and Stephen couldn’t be left alone; yet her mother
was so kind, and one would hate to hurt her. But one’s husband and his
happiness--did not they come first?

Her mother went away, shutting the door softly. Virginia lay listening
for Stephen’s footsteps.

Her forehead had a pucker in it again.

Used to the bed....




XIV


Catherine was safe at Chickover; for that much she was thankful. But,
apart from safety, what a strange, different place it now seemed to her.

Each night throughout that week as she undressed, she had a fresh set of
reflections to occupy her mind. It was a queer week. It had an
atmosphere of its own. In this developing dampness--for so at last it
presented itself to her imagination--she felt as if her wings, supposing
she had any, hung more and more stiffly at her side. As the solemn days
trudged one by one heavily past she had a curious sensation of ebbing
vitality. Life was going out of her. Mists were closing in on her. The
house was so quiet that it made her feel deaf. After dark there were so
few lights that it made her feel blind. Oh yes, she was safe,--safe from
that mad young man; but there were other things here--strange,
uncomfortable things. There was this depressing feeling of a slow,
creeping, choking, wet fog gradually enveloping her.

On Monday night as she undressed she didn’t think like this, she hadn’t
got as far. All she did on Monday night was to go over the events of the
day with mild wonder. She had said a great many prayers that day; for
not only had there been family prayers before breakfast and the last
thing at night, but Stephen had asked her after tea whether she
wouldn’t like to go with him to evening service.

A host’s suggestions are commands. When he invites, one must needs
accept. Indeed, she had accepted with the propitiatory alacrity common
in guests when their hosts invite, aware that he was doing his best,
with the means at his disposal, to entertain her, and anxious to show
herself grateful. Where other hosts take their guests to look at ruins,
or similar unusual sights, Stephen took his to church.

‘Oh--delightful,’ she had exclaimed on his proposing it; and only
afterwards reflected that this was perhaps not quite the right word.

Virginia didn’t go with them, because so much kneeling and standing
mightn’t be good for her, and she and Stephen set out after tea in the
windy dusk by themselves, Stephen carrying the lantern that would be lit
for their walk home in the dark. Catherine, accordingly, had had two
<i>tête-à-tête</i> talks with Stephen that day, but as she was walking rather
fast during them, and there was a high wind into the bargain, flicking
her blood, she had had no trouble in keeping awake. Also there was the
hope of the quiet relaxing in church at the end, with no need to make
any effort for a while, to support her.

But there in the pew that used to be hers, sitting in it established and
spread out, was Stephen’s mother; and Stephen’s mother was of those who
are articulate in church, who like to set an example of distinctness in
prayer and praise, and look round at people who merely mumble.
Catherine, who was a mumbler, had had to speak up and sing up. There was
no help for it. One of Mrs. Colquhoun’s looks was enough, and she found
herself docilely doing, as she so often in life had found herself
docilely doing, what was expected of her.

Afterwards she and Mrs. Colquhoun had waited together in the porch for
Stephen to come out of his vestry, the while exchanging pleasant speech,
and then they had all three gone on together to a meeting in the
schoolroom--Catherine hadn’t known there was to be a meeting as well as
the service--at which Stephen was giving an address.

‘Would you care to come round to the schoolroom?’ he had asked her on
joining his two mothers in the porch, buttoning his coat as he spoke,
for it was flapping wildly in the wind. ‘I am giving an address.’

At this point Catherine had felt a little overwhelmed by his
hospitality; but, unable to refuse, had continued to accept.

He gave an informing address. She hadn’t known till she heard it that
they were at the beginning of the week before the week that ends in
Easter, the busiest fortnight of the clerical year, and she now
discovered that there were to be daily morning and evening services,
several sermons, and many meetings, between that day and the following
Sunday.

Would she have to come to them all? she asked herself, as she sat with
Mrs. Colquhoun, after having been stopped several times on her way to
her seat by old friends in the parish, people she had known for years;
and always <i>tête-à-tête</i> with Stephen during the walk there and back,
and always under Mrs. Colquhoun’s supervision in the pew?

Up on the platform, in front of an enormous blackboard, stood Stephen,
giving his address. He told his parishioners they were entering the
very most solemn time of the whole year, and exceptional opportunities
were being offered of observing it. He read out a list of the
opportunities, and ended by exhorting those present to love one another
and, during this holy season, to watch without ceasing and pray. Yes,
she would have to come to them all. A guest is a helpless creature; a
mother-in-law guest is a very helpless creature; an uninvited
mother-in-law guest is a thing bound hand and foot.

Soberly, when the meeting was over, she walked out of the stuffy
schoolroom with its smell of slates, into the great wind-swept cleanness
of the night. It was nearly half-past seven, and she and Stephen were
unable therefore to accept Mrs. Colquhoun’s invitation to go into the
Rectory and rest. She had had, however, to promise to look in the next
day but one--‘That is, dear Mrs. Cumfrit,’ Mrs. Colquhoun had said,
suggesting the next day but one as a test of the length of her visit,
‘if you will still be here. You will? Delightful.’

As she undressed on Monday night and thought of her day, her feeling,
though she regarded its contents since Stephen’s arrival with surprise,
was still that she was thankful to be there. It was sweet to be with
Virginia, sweet and natural to be able, in moments of stress, to take
refuge in her old home, in her Virginia’s home. And Stephen, though he
took his duties as host too seriously, was such a good man; and Virginia
was evidently supremely happy in her undemonstrative little way. If only
she could manage, when Stephen talked, to keep awake better.... What was
it about him, whom she so much respected, that sent her to sleep? But
really, after the silliness of her recent experiences in London, it was
like getting into a bath to come into this pure place--a big, cool,
clean, peaceful bath.

Thus did Catherine think on Monday night in her bedroom; and, while she
was doing so, Stephen was saying to Virginia: ‘What, my love, makes your
mother so drowsy? This afternoon--and again this evening----’

‘Don’t people always get drowsy when they get old?’ Virginia asked in
reply.

‘Ah,’ said Stephen thoughtfully. ‘Yes. I suppose they do.’ Then,
remembering that Catherine was a year younger than himself, he added,
‘Women, of course, age more rapidly than men. A man your mother’s age
would still be----’

‘A boy,’ interrupted Virginia, laying her face against his.

‘Well, not quite,’ said Stephen smiling, ‘but certainly in the prime of
life.’

‘Of course,’ said Virginia, rubbing her cheek softly up and down. ‘A boy
in the prime of life.’

‘Yes--had he had the happiness of marrying you.’

‘Darling.’

‘My blessed child.’

On Tuesday evening, once more in her room preparing for bed, with
another day past and over to reflect upon, her thoughts were different,
or, rather, they were maturing. She continued to feel that Virginia’s
home was her natural refuge, and she still told herself she was glad she
was in it, but she had begun to be aware of awkwardnesses. Little ones.
Perhaps inseparable from the situation.

If Christopher had forced her down to Chickover in a year’s time instead
of now, these awkwardnesses would probably not have occurred. But the
servants, indoors and out, hadn’t had time to forget her, and they
showed a flattering but embarrassing pleasure at her reappearance. She
had had no idea that they had liked her as much as all that. She
couldn’t imagine why they should. It was awkward, because they conveyed,
most unfortunately, by their manner that they still looked upon her as
their real mistress. This was very silly and tiresome of them. She must
draw into her shell. But naturally on coming across a familiar face she
had been pleased, and had greeted it amiably, for of those who were
still there she knew all the history, and for years they had looked
after her, and she them. Naturally on meeting them she had inquired
after their family affairs. Their response, however, had been too warm.
It amounted to a criticism of the new <i>régime</i>.

Out in the garden, for instance, the gardeners that day had seemed to
come and garden wherever she happened to be walking, and then of
course--how natural it all was--she had talked to them of the last
autumn bulbs which had been planted under her directions, and had gone
round with them looking at the results, at the crocuses in full glory,
the daffodils beginning their beauty, and the tulips still stuck neatly
in their buds; and she had become absorbed, as people who are interested
in such things do become absorbed, in the conversation.

Stephen, passing through on his way to some work in the parish, had
found her like this, poring over a border, deep in talk with the head
gardener, and hadn’t liked it. She saw by his face he hadn’t liked it.
He had merely raised his hat and gone by without a word. She must be
cooler to the gardeners. But as though it mattered--as though it
mattered. <i>Little children, love one another....</i> She sighed as she
thought what a very happy world it would be if they really did.

Then there was Ellen, the under-housemaid, now promoted to be head, and
one of the few indoor servants left. In the old days a model of reserve,
Ellen now positively burst with talk. She was always hovering round her,
always bringing her hot water, and clean towels, and more
flowers--watching for her to come upstairs, wanting to know what she
could do next. That morning, when she came back from church, Ellen was
there in her room poking the fire into a blaze, and had insisted that
her stockings must be damp after the muddy walk, and had knelt down and
taken them off.

Catherine, amused at her care for her, had said, ‘Ellen, I believe you
quite like me.’

And Ellen, turning red, had exclaimed, ‘Oh, ma’am!’

The excessive devotion in her voice was another criticism of the
existing <i>régime</i>. It was a warning to Catherine that she must not
encourage this. Servants were like children--the past was always rosy to
them, what they had had was always so much better than what they were
having. She must furbish up her tact, and steer a little more carefully
among these unexpected shallows. She sighed faintly. Tact was so tiring.
Still, she was thankful, she told herself, to be there.

And while she was thinking this, Stephen was saying to Virginia: ‘We
must make allowances.’

He had just been describing what he had seen in the garden. ‘No one,’ he
had finished thoughtfully--‘no one would have supposed, from their
general appearance and expression, that your mother was not the mistress
and Burroughs her servant. Burroughs, indeed, might easily have been
mistaken for a particularly devoted servant. I was sorry, my darling,
because of you. I was, I confess, jealous on my Virginia’s behalf.’

‘And there’s Ellen, too,’ said Virginia, her brow puckered. ‘She’s
always in mother’s room.’

At this fresh example of injudiciousness Stephen was silent. He couldn’t
help thinking that perfect tact would have avoided, especially under the
peculiar and delicate circumstances, long and frequent conversations
with some one else’s servants. He didn’t say so to Virginia, for had he
not often, and with sincerity, praised precisely this in his
mother-in-law, her perfect tact? She appeared after all not to possess
it in quite the quantity he had believed, but that was no reason for
hurting his Virginia’s feelings by pointing it out. Virginia loved her
mother; and perhaps the lapse was temporary.

‘We must make allowances,’ he repeated presently.

‘Yes,’ said Virginia, who would have given much not to have been put by
her mother in a position in which allowances had to be made. After
having been so proud and happy in the knowledge that Stephen considered
her mother flawless as a mother-in-law, was it not hard?

On Wednesday night, when Catherine went to bed, her reflections were
definitely darker. This was the day she had, at Mrs. Colquhoun’s
invitation, looked in at the Rectory after lunch, bearing with her a
message from Virginia to the effect that she hoped her mother-in-law
would come back with her mother to tea.

Mrs. Colquhoun had refused.

‘No, no, dear Mrs. Cumfrit,’ she had said. ‘We must take care of our
little girl. She mustn’t be overtired. Too many people to pour out for
aren’t at all good for her just now.’

‘But there wouldn’t be anybody but us,’ Catherine had said. ‘And
Virginia says she hasn’t seen you for ages.’

‘Yes. Not since the day you arrived. It does seem a long while to me
too, but believe me it wouldn’t be fair to the child to have all of us
there at once.’

She had then busily talked of other matters, entertaining her visitor
with tales of her simple but full life, explaining how she didn’t know,
owing to never being idle a moment, what loneliness meant, and couldn’t
understand why women should ever want to be anywhere but in their own
homes.

‘At our age one wants just one’s own home, doesn’t one, dear Mrs.
Cumfrit. However small it is, however modest, it is <i>home</i>. Don’t you
too feel how, as one gets older, one’s own little daily round, one’s own
little common task, gone cheerfully, done thoroughly, become more and
more satisfying and beautiful?’

Catherine said she did.

Mrs. Colquhoun begged her to take some refreshment after her walk,
declaring that after a certain age it was one’s duty not to overtax the
body.

‘We grandmothers----’ she said, smiling.

Catherine endeavoured to respond to Mrs. Colquhoun’s playfulness, by
more on the same lines of her own.

‘Oh, but we mustn’t count our grandchildren before they’re hatched,’ she
had said with answering smiles.

And Mrs. Colquhoun had seemed a little shocked at that. The word
hatched, perhaps ... in connection with Stephen’s child.

‘Dear Mrs. Cumfrit----’ she had murmured, in the tone of one
overlooking a lapse.

But it wasn’t her visit to Mrs. Colquhoun that was making her undress so
thoughtfully on Wednesday night, but the fact, most disagreeable to have
to admit, that she was tired of Stephen. From the beginning of the
<i>tête-à-tête</i> walks she had been afraid that presently she might get a
little tired of him, and now, after the tenth of them, the thing she
feared had happened.

This dejected her, for it was her earnest wish not to get tired of
Stephen. He was her Virginia’s loved husband, he was her host; and she
wished to feel nothing towards him but the warmest affectionate
interest. If she saw less of him, she reflected as she slowly, and with
the movements of fatigue, got ready for bed, it would be easier. Wisdom
dictated that Stephen should be eked out; but how could one eke out a
host so persistent in doing his duty? It was difficult. It was very,
very difficult.

She sat a long time pensive by the fire, wondering how she was going to
bear any more of these walks to and from church. Good to have a refuge,
but sometimes its price....

And while she was sitting thus, Stephen in their bedroom was saying to
Virginia: ‘I miss our mother.’

‘Which one?’ asked Virginia, not at first quite following.

‘Ours,’ said Stephen. ‘She hasn’t been here since yours arrived. Have
you noticed that, darling?’

‘Indeed I have. And I miss her very much, too. I asked her to come to
tea this afternoon, but she didn’t. The message mother brought back
wasn’t very clear, I thought.’

There was a pause. Then Stephen said: ‘She is full of tact.’

‘Which one?’ asked Virginia again, who felt--and how mournfully--that he
could no longer mean her mother, but tried to hope he did.

‘Ours,’ said Stephen, stroking Virginia’s hair; and presently added, ‘We
must make allowances.’

Virginia sighed.

On Thursday night, when Catherine was once more going to bed, she sat
for a long while without undressing, staring into the fire. She was too
tired to undress. Her mind was as tired as her body. Her spirits were
low. For, while the night before she had been facing the fact that she
was tired of Stephen, to-night she was facing the much worse fact that
he was tired of her. She hadn’t been able to help noticing it. It had
become obvious on their twelfth walk; and it had added immensely to her
struggles.

For what can one say to somebody who, one feels in one’s bones, is tired
of one? How difficult, in such a case, is conversation. It had been
difficult enough before, but that day, on making her discovery, it had
become as good as impossible. Yet there were the conventions; and for
two grown-up people to walk together and not speak was absurd. They
simply had to. And as Catherine was more practised than Stephen in easy
talk, it was she who, struggling, had had to do more and more of it
until, as he grew ever dumber, she had to do it all.

In the house, too, the same thing had happened. The meals had been
almost monologues--Catherine’s--for the honest Virginia was incapable of
talking if she had nothing she wished to say, or, rather, nothing she
considered desirable should be said. They would have sat at the table in
dead silence but for Catherine’s efforts. As it was, she only succeeded
in extracting occasional words, mostly single, from the other two.

Well, it was evident that in ordinary cases, having tired one’s host,
one would go away. But was this quite an ordinary case? She couldn’t
think so. She couldn’t help remembering, though it was a thing she never
thought of, that she had made way without difficulty for Stephen to come
and live in this very house, giving him everything--why, with both hands
giving him everything--and she couldn’t help feeling that to be allowed
to stay in it for a few days, or even weeks, wasn’t so very much to want
of him. Not that he didn’t allow her to stay in it; he was still
assiduous in all politenesses, opening doors, and lighting candles, and
so on. It was only that she knew he was tired of her; tired to the point
of no longer being able to speak when she was there.

Catherine wasn’t very vain, but what vanity she had was ruffled. She
tried, however, to be fair. She had been tired of Stephen first, and had
thought it natural. Now that he, in his turn, was tired of her, why
should she mind? She did, however, mind. She had taken such pains to be
agreeable. She had walked backwards and forwards to church so
assiduously--walked miles and miles, if one counted all the times up.
And she had really tried very hard to talk on subjects that interested
him,--the parish, the plans, the services, even adventuring into the
region of religion. Why should he be tired of her? Why had this blight
descended on him? Why had he become speechless? Why?

As she sat by her fire on Thursday night she felt curiously down and
lonely. Stephen and Virginia, she had become conscious during the week,
were very much one, and a fear stole into her heart, a small flicker of
fear, gone as soon as come, that perhaps they were one too in this, and
that Virginia too might be....

No, she turned her head away and wouldn’t even look in the direction of
such a fear. But, sitting there in the night, with the big house with
all its passages and empty rooms on the other side of her door dark and
silent, the feeling came upon her that she was a ghost injudiciously
wandered back to its old haunts, to find, what it might have known, that
it no longer had part nor lot in them.

From this feeling too she turned away, and impatiently, for it was a
shame to feel like that when there was Virginia.

And while she sat looking at the fire, her hands hanging over the sides
of the chair, too weary to go to bed, Stephen in their room said to
Virginia: ‘What a very blessed thing it is, my darling, that each day
has to end, and that then there is night.’

And Virginia said, ‘Oh, Stephen--isn’t it!’




XV


On Saturday Stephen would have to go up to London for his two last
Lenten sermons in the City, and Catherine made up her mind that she
would stay over the week-end, because he wouldn’t then be there to be
oppressed by her, and she would go away on Monday before he came back.

Gradually, in bed on Friday morning during the interval between drinking
her tea and getting up, she came to this decision. In the morning
light--the sun was shining that day--it seemed rather amusing than
otherwise that her son-in-law should so quickly have come to the end of
his powers of enduring her. Hers, after all, was to be the conventional
fate of mothers-in-law. And she had supposed herself so much nicer than
most! She thought, ‘How funny,’ and tried to see it as altogether
amusing; but it was not altogether amusing. ‘You’re vain,’ she then
rebuked herself.

Yes; she would follow Mrs. Colquhoun’s example, and stay in her own
home. Perhaps that was the secret of Mrs. Colquhoun’s success as a
mother-in-law, and she, very obviously, was a success. She would emulate
her; and from her own home defy Christopher.

It was all owing to him that she had ever left her home. How unfortunate
that she should have come across somebody so mad. Oughtn’t Stephen and
his mother, if they knew the real reason for her appearance in their
midst, applaud her as discreet? What could a woman do more proper than,
in such circumstances, run away? But they would be too profoundly
shocked by the real reason to be able to do anything but regard her, she
was sure, with horror. Her, not Christopher. And she was afraid their
attitude would be natural. ‘We grandmothers....’

Catherine turned red. Mercifully, no one would ever know. Down here, in
this atmosphere where she was regarded as coeval with Mrs. Colquhoun,
those encounters with Christopher seemed infinitely worse than in
London,--so bad, indeed, that they hardly seemed real. She would go back
on Monday, declining to be kept out of her own home longer, and take
firm steps. Christopher should never see her again. If he tried to, she
would write a letter that would clear his mind for ever, and she would,
for what was left to her of life, proceed with undeviating dignity along
her allotted path to old age. And after all, what could he really do?
Between her and him there was, first, the hall porter, and then Mrs.
Mitcham. To both of these she would give precise instructions.

In this state of mind, a state more definite than any she had been in
that week, as if a ray of light, pale and wintry, but yet light, had
straggled for a moment through the mists, did Catherine get up that
morning; but not in this state of mind did she that evening go to bed,
for by the evening she had made a further discovery, and one that took
away what still was left of her vitality: Virginia was tired of her too.

Virginia. It seemed impossible. She couldn’t believe it. But, believe it
or not, she knew it; and she knew it because that afternoon at tea,
before Virginia had had time to take care, her face had flashed into
immense, unmistakable relief when her mother said, in answer to some
inquiry of Mrs. Colquhoun’s, who had at last consented to come round,
that she would have to go back to London on Monday. Instantly the
child’s face had flashed into light; and though she had, as it were, at
once banged the shutters to again, the flash had escaped, and Catherine
had seen it.

After this her spirits were at zero. She allowed herself to be taken
away to church--though why any longer bother to try to please
Stephen?--because she was too spiritless to say she preferred to stay at
home. She went there one of four this time, Mr. Lambton having come in
too to tea, and walked silent among them. The others were very nearly
gay. The effect of her announcement had been to restore speech to
Stephen, to make Mrs. Colquhoun more cordial than ever, and even to
produce in Mr. Lambton, who without understanding the cause yet felt the
sudden rise of temperature, almost a friskiness. It was nice, thought
Catherine drearily, trying to be sardonic so as not to be too deeply
hurt, to have the power of making four people happy by just saying one
was going away.

She walked among them in silence, unable to feel sardonic long, and
telling herself that it wasn’t <i>really</i> true that Virginia was tired of
her, for it wasn’t Virginia at all,--it was Stephen. Virginia, being so
completely one with him, had caught it from him as one catches a
disease. The disease wasn’t part of Virginia; it would go, and she would
be as she was before. Catherine, however, would not stay a minute longer
than Monday morning. She would have liked to go away the very next day,
but to alter her announced intention now might make Virginia afraid her
mother had noticed something, and then she would be so unhappy, poor
little thing, thinking she had hurt her. For, after that one look of
relief, she had blushed painfully, and what she was feeling had opened
out before Catherine like a book: she was glad her mother was going, and
was unhappy that she should be glad.

No; Catherine would stay till Monday, so that Virginia shouldn’t be hurt
by the knowledge that she had hurt her mother. Oh, these family tangles
and tendernesses, these unexpected inflamed places that mustn’t be
touched, these complicated emotions, and hurtings, and avoidances and
concealments, these loving intentions and these wretched results! It
wasn’t easy to be a mother successfully, and she began to perceive it
was difficult successfully to be a daughter. The position of
mother-in-law, which she had taken on so lightly as a natural one, not
giving it a thought, wasn’t at all easy to fill either, being evidently
a highly complicated and artificial affair. She thought she saw, too,
that sons-in-law might have their difficulties; and she ended, as the
party approached the churchyard, by thinking it extraordinarily
difficult successfully to be a human being at all. She felt very old.
She missed George.

Mr. Lambton opened the gate for the ladies, and, with his Rector, stood
aside. Mrs. Colquhoun was prepared to persuade Catherine to pass through
first, but Catherine, in deep abstraction, and seeing an open gate in
her path, passed through it without persuasion.

‘Absent-minded,’ thought Mrs. Colquhoun, explaining this otherwise
ruffling lapse from manners. ‘Ageing,’ she added, explaining the
absent-mindedness; and there was something dragging about Catherine’s
walk which really did look rather old.

The others caught her up. ‘A penny, dear Mrs. Cumfrit,’ said Mrs.
Colquhoun, rallying her, ‘for your thoughts.’

They happened to be passing George’s tomb--George, the unfailingly good,
the unvaryingly kind, the steadfastly loving, George who had been so
devoted to her, and never, never got tired of her--and Catherine, roused
thus suddenly, said absently, ‘I miss George.’

It spread a chill, this answer of hers. It was so unexpected. Mr.
Lambton, though unaware of the cause, for he didn’t know, being new in
the parish, what George was being missed, felt the drop in the
temperature and immediately dropped with it into silence. Neither Mrs.
Colquhoun nor Stephen could think for a moment of anything to say. Poor
Mr. Cumfrit had been dead twelve years, and to be missed out loud after
twelve solid years of death seemed to them uncalled for. It put them in
an awkward position. It was almost an expression of dissatisfaction with
the present situation. And, in any case, after twelve years it was
difficult to condole with reasonable freshness.

Something had to be done, however, if only because of Mr. Lambton; and
Stephen spoke first.

‘Ah,’ he said; and then, because he couldn’t think of anything else,
said it again more thoughtfully. ‘Ah,’ said Stephen a second time.

And Mrs. Colquhoun, taking Catherine’s arm, and walking thus with her
the rest of the way to the porch, said, ‘Dear Mrs. Cumfrit, I do so
understand. Haven’t I been through it all too?’

‘I can’t think why I said that,’ said Catherine, looking first at her
and then at Stephen, lost in surprise at herself, her cheeks flushed.

‘So natural, so natural,’ Mrs. Colquhoun assured her; to which Stephen,
desirous of doing his best, added, ‘Very proper.’

That night in their bedroom Stephen said to Virginia: ‘Your mother
misses your father.’

Virginia looked at him with startled eyes. ‘Oh? Do you think so,
Stephen? Why?’ she asked, turning red; for how dreadful if her mother
had felt, had noticed, that she and Stephen.... Yet why else should she
suddenly begin to miss....

‘Because she said so.’

Virginia stood looking at Stephen, the comb with which she was combing
out her long dark hair suspended. It wasn’t natural to begin all over
again missing her father. Her mother wouldn’t have if she hadn’t
noticed.... How dreadful. She would so much hate her to be hurt. Poor
mother. Yet what could she do? Stephen, and his peace and happiness, did
come first. Except that she couldn’t imagine such expressions applied to
either of them, she did feel as if she were between the devil and the
deep sea.

‘Do you think--do you suppose----’ she faltered.

‘It is not, is it my darling, altogether flattering to us,’ said
Stephen.

‘Oh, Stephen--yes--I know you’ve done all you could. You’ve been
wonderful----’

She put down the comb and went across to him, and he enfolded her in his
arms.

‘I wish----’ she began.

‘What do you wish, my beloved wife?’ he asked, laying one hand, as if
in blessing, on her head. ‘I hope it is something nice, for, you know,
whatever it is you wish I shall be unable not to wish it too.’

She smiled, and sighed, and nestled close.

‘Darling Stephen,’ she murmured; and after a moment said, with another
sigh, ‘I wish mother didn’t miss father.’

‘Yes,’ said Stephen. ‘Indeed I wish it too. But,’ he went on, stroking
the long lovely strands of her thick hair, ‘we must make allowances.’




XVI


The next morning Catherine went to church for the last time--for when
Stephen was in London, and not there to invite her to accompany him,
which he solemnly before each separate service did, there would be no
more need to go--and for the last time mingled her psalms with Mrs.
Colquhoun’s.

The psalms at Morning Prayer were said, not sung, and she was in the
middle of joining with Mrs. Colquhoun in asserting that it was better to
trust in the Lord than to put any confidence in man, which at that
moment she was very willing to believe, when she felt she was being
stared at.

She looked up from her prayer-book, but could see only a few backs, and,
one on each side of the chancel, Stephen and Mr. Lambton tossing the
verses backwards and forwards across to each other, as if they were a
kind of holy ball. She went on with her psalm, but the feeling grew
stronger, and at last, contrary to all decent practice, she turned
round.

There was Christopher.

She stood gazing at him, her open prayer-book in her hand, for such an
appreciable moment that Mrs. Colquhoun had to say the next verse without
her.

<i>The same stone</i>, said Mrs. Colquhoun very loud and distinctly, and in a
voice of remonstrance--for really, what had come over Virginia’s
mother, turning her back on the altar in this manner?--<i>which the
builders refused is become the head-stone of the corner.</i>

She had to say all the other verses without her as well, and all
subsequent responses, because Virginia’s mother, though she presently
resumed her proper eastward position, was thenceforth--such odd
behaviour--dumb.

Perhaps she was not feeling well. She certainly looked pale, or, rather,
yellow, thought Mrs. Colquhoun, observing her during the reading of the
first lesson, through which she sat with downcast eyes and grew, so it
seemed to Mrs. Colquhoun, steadily yellower.

‘Dear Mrs. Cumfrit,’ whispered Mrs. Colquhoun at last, bending towards
her, for she really did look sick, and it would be terrible if
she--‘would you like to go out?’

‘Oh <i>no</i>,’ was the quick, emphatic answer.

The service came to an end, it seemed to Catherine, in a flash. She
hadn’t had time to settle anything at all in her mind. She didn’t in the
least know what she was going to do. How had he found her? Had Mrs.
Mitcham betrayed her? After her orders, her strict, exact orders? Was
everybody failing her, even Mrs. Mitcham? How dared he follow her. It
was persecution. And what was she to do, what <i>was</i> she to do, if he
behaved badly, if he showed any of his idiotic, his mad feelings?

She knelt so long after the benediction that Mrs. Colquhoun began to
fidget. Mrs. Colquhoun couldn’t get out. She was hemmed into the pew by
the kneeling figure. The few worshippers went away, and still Virginia’s
mother--really most odd--knelt. The outer door of the vestry was banged
to, which meant Stephen and Mr. Lambton had gone, and still she knelt.
The verger came down the aisle with his keys jingling to lock up, and
still she knelt. ‘This,’ thought Mrs. Colquhoun, vexed by such a
prolonged and ill-timed devoutness, ‘is ostentation.’ And she touched
Catherine’s elbow. ‘Dear Mrs. Cumfrit----’ she reminded her.

Catherine got up, very pale. The moment had come when she must turn and
face Christopher.

But the church was empty. No one was in it except the verger, waiting
down by the door with his keys and looking patient. If only Christopher
had gone right away--if only something in the service had touched him,
and made him see he was behaving outrageously, and he had gone right
away....

The porch, too, was empty. Perhaps he had really gone. Perhaps--she
almost began to hope he had never been there, that she had imagined him.
She walked slowly beside Mrs. Colquhoun along the path to the churchyard
gate. Stephen had hurried off to a sick-bed, Mr. Lambton had withdrawn
to his lodgings to prepare his Sunday sermons.

‘I’m afraid you felt unwell in church,’ said Mrs. Colquhoun, suiting her
steps to Catherine’s, which were small and slow, which, in fact,
dragged.

‘I have rather a headache to-day,’ said Catherine, in a voice that
trailed away into indistinctness, for, on turning a bend in the path,
there once more was Christopher.

He was examining George’s tomb.

Mrs. Colquhoun saw him at the same moment, and her attention was at once
diverted from Catherine. Strangers were rare in that quiet corner of the
world, and she scrutinised this one with keen, interested eyes. The
young man in his leather motoring-clothes pleased her, for not only was
he a well-set-up young man, but he was reading poor Mr. Cumfrit’s
inscription bareheaded. So, in her opinion, should all <i>hic jacet</i>
inscriptions be read. It showed, thought Mrs. Colquhoun, a rather
delicate reverence, not usually found in these wild scorchers of the
road. If Mr. Cumfrit had been the Unknown Warrior himself his
inscription couldn’t have been read more respectfully.

She was pleased, and wondered complacently who the stranger could be;
and almost before she had had time to wonder, he turned from the tomb
and came towards them.

‘Why, he seems----’ she began; for the young man was showing signs of
recognition, his face was widening in greeting, and the next moment he
was holding out his hand to her companion.

‘How do you do,’ he said, with such warmth that she concluded he must be
Mrs. Cumfrit’s favourite nephew. She had never heard of any nephews, but
most families have got some.

‘How do you do,’ replied her companion, with no warmth at all--with,
indeed, hardly any voice at all.

The newcomer, standing bareheaded in the sun, seemed red all over. His
face was very red, and his hair glowed. She liked the look of him.
Vigour. Life. A relief after her bloodless companion.

‘Introduce us,’ she said briskly, with the frankness she felt her age
entitled her to when dealing with young folk of the other sex. ‘I am
sure,’ she said heartily, holding out her hand in its sensible,
loose-fitting wash-leather glove, ‘you are one of Mrs. Cumfrit’s
nephews, and our dear Virginia’s cousin.’

‘No, I’m dashed if I am,’ exclaimed the stranger. ‘I mean’--he turned
an even more fiery red--‘I’m not.’

‘Mr. Monckton,’ said Catherine, in a far-away voice.

‘She doesn’t tell you who <i>I</i> am,’ smiled Mrs. Colquhoun, gripping his
hand, still pleased with him in spite of his exclamation, for she liked
young men, and there existed, besides, a tradition that she got on well
with them, and knew how to manage them. ‘Have you noticed that people
who introduce hardly ever do so completely? I’m the other
mother-in-law.’

A faint hope began to flutter in Catherine’s heart. Christopher had the
appearance of one who doesn’t know what to say next. She had never known
him not know that before. If Mrs. Colquhoun could reduce him to silence,
she might yet get through the next few minutes not too discreditably.
‘Mrs. Cumfrit and I,’ explained Mrs. Colquhoun, putting her arm through
Catherine’s, as though elucidating her, ‘are both the mothers-in-law of
the same delightful couple--I of her daughter, she of my son. We are
linked together, she and I, in indissoluble bonds.’

Christopher wished to slay her as she stood. The liberal days were past,
however, when one could behave simply, and as he couldn’t behave simply
and slay her, he didn’t know how to behave to her at all.

‘The woman has a beak,’ he thought, standing red and tongue-tied before
her. ‘She’s a bird of prey. She has got her talons into my Catherine.
Linked together! Good God.’

Convention preventing his saying this out loud, or any of the other
things he was feeling, he turned in silence and walked with them, on the
other side of Catherine, towards the gate.

A faint desire to laugh stole like a small trickle of reviving courage
through Catherine’s cowed spirit. It was the first desire of the kind
she had had since she got to Chickover, and it arrived, she couldn’t
help noticing, at the same time as Christopher.

Mrs. Colquhoun was a little surprised at the silence of her two
companions. Mr. Monckton, whoever he might be, didn’t respond to her
friendliness as instantly as other young men she had dealt with, and
Mrs. Cumfrit said nothing either. Then she remembered her friend’s
attack in church, and made allowances; while as for Mr. Monckton,
whoever he might be, he probably was shy. Well, she knew how to manage
shy young folk; they never stayed shy long with her.

‘Mrs. Cumfrit,’ she explained over the top of Catherine’s head to
Christopher, ‘isn’t feeling very well to-day.’

‘Oh?’ said Christopher quickly, with a swift, anxious look at Catherine.

‘No. So we mustn’t make her talk, Mr. Monckton. She turned a little
faint just now in church’--again the desire to laugh crept through
Catherine. ‘She’ll be all right presently, and meanwhile you and I will
entertain each other. You shall tell me all about yourself, and how it
is you’ve dropped out of the clouds into our quiet little midst.’

Christopher’s earnest wish at that moment was to uproot one of the
tombstones and with it fell Mrs. Colquhoun to the ground. That old
jackdaw Stephen’s mother ... birds of a feather ... making him look and
be a fool....

‘Do tell us,’ urged Mrs. Colquhoun pleasantly, across the top of
Catherine’s head, as he said nothing.

Catherine, walking in silence between them, began to feel she was in
competent hands.

‘There isn’t much to tell,’ said Christopher, thus inexorably urged, and
flaming red to the roots of his flaming hair.

‘Everything,’ Mrs. Colquhoun assured him encouragingly, ‘interests us
here. All is grist to our quiet little mills--isn’t it, dear Mrs.
Cumfrit. Ah, no--I forgot. You are not to be made to talk. We will do it
all for you, won’t we, Mr. Monckton.’

They had got to the gate. Christopher lunged at it to open it for them.

As Catherine went through it he said to her quickly, in a low voice,
‘You look years older.’

She raised her eyes a moment. ‘I always was,’ she murmured, with, she
hoped, blood-curdling significance.

‘Older?’ repeated Mrs. Colquhoun, whose hearing, as she often told her
friends, was still, she was thankful to say, unimpaired. ‘That, my young
friend, is what may be said daily of us all. No doubt Mrs. Cumfrit
notices a change even in you. Have you not met for a long while?’

‘Not for an eternity,’ said Christopher, in the sort of voice a man
swears with.

A motor-cycle with a side-car was in the road outside the gate, and Mrs.
Colquhoun paused on seeing it.

‘Yours, of course, Mr. Monckton,’ she said. ‘This is the machine in
which you have dropped out of the skies on us. And with a side-car, too.
An empty one, though. I don’t like to think of a young man with an empty
side-car. But perhaps the young lady has merely gone for a little
stroll?’

‘I have brought it to take Mrs. Cumfrit back to London in,’ said
Christopher stiffly; but of what use stiffness, of what use dignity,
when one was being made to look and be such a hopeless fool?

‘Really?’ said Mrs. Colquhoun, excessively surprised. ‘Only, she doesn’t
go back till Monday--do you, dear Mrs. Cumfrit. Ah, no--don’t talk. I
forgot.’

‘Neither do I,’ said Christopher.

‘Really?’ said Mrs. Colquhoun again; and was for a moment, in her turn,
silent.

A side-car seemed to her a highly unsuitable vehicle for a person of
Mrs. Cumfrit’s age. Nor could she recollect, during all the time she
had, off and on, known her, ever having seen her in such a thing.
Instinct here began to warn her, as she afterwards was fond of telling
her friends, that the situation was not quite normal. How far it was
from normal, however, instinct in her case, being that of a decent
elderly woman presently to become a grandmother, was naturally incapable
of guessing.

‘You didn’t tell us, dear Mrs. Cumfrit,’ she said, turning to her pale
and obviously not very well companion, ‘that this was to be your mode of
progress. Delightful, of course, in a way. But personally I should be
afraid of the shaking. Young people don’t feel these things as we do.
Are you, then,’ she continued, turning to Christopher, ‘staying in the
neighbourhood over Sunday?’

‘Yes,’ said Christopher, taking a rug out of the side-car and unfolding
it.

‘I wonder where. You’ll think me an inquisitive old woman, but really I
wonder where. You see, I know this district so well, and there
isn’t--oh, I expect you’re with the Parkers. They usually have a
houseful of young people for the week-end. You’ll enjoy it. The country
round is--What, are you going on, dear Mrs. Cumfrit? Then good-bye for
the present. I shall see you at lunch. Virginia always likes me to come
in on these Lenten Saturdays while Stephen is away. It has become a
ritual. Now take my advice, and lie down for half an hour. I’m a very
sensible person, Mr. Monckton, and know that one can’t go on for ever as
if one were still twenty-five.’

Christopher stepped forward, intercepting Catherine. ‘I’ll drive you
back,’ he said.

‘I’d rather walk,’ she said.

‘Then I’ll walk with you.’ And he threw the rug into the side-car again.

‘What? And leave your motor-cycle and rug and everything unprotected?’
exclaimed Mrs. Colquhoun, who had listened to this brief dialogue with
surprise. Mr. Monckton, whoever he might be, was neither Mrs. Cumfrit’s
son, for she hadn’t got one, nor her nephew, for he had himself said,
with the emphasis of the male young, that he wasn’t, and his
masterfulness seemed accordingly a little unaccountable.

‘You’d better let me drive you,’ he persisted to her pale companion,
taking no notice of this exclamation. ‘You oughtn’t to walk.’

Was he, perhaps, thought Mrs. Colquhoun, a doctor? A young doctor? Mrs.
Cumfrit’s London medical adviser? If so, of course.... Yet even then,
her not having mentioned his expected arrival, and her plan for motoring
up with him on Monday, was odd. Besides, nobody except the very rich had
doctors dangling after them.

‘Let me drive you,’ said the young man again.

And Mrs. Cumfrit said--rather helplessly, Mrs. Colquhoun thought, as if
she were seriously lacking in backbone, ‘Very well.’

It was all extremely odd.

‘Virginia will wonder,’ remarked Mrs. Colquhoun, looking on with a
distinctly pursed expression while her colleague was being rolled into
the rug as carefully as if she were china,--rolled right up to her chin
in it, as if she were going thousands of miles, and at least to Lapland.
‘But no doubt you have told her Mr. Monckton was coming down.’

‘I shall only drive part of the way,’ answered Mrs. Cumfrit--there was a
tinge of colour in her face now, Mrs. Colquhoun noticed; perhaps the
tight rug was choking her--‘but I shall get back quicker like this.’

‘I wonder,’ said Mrs. Colquhoun grimly.

She watched them disappear in a cloud of dust, and then turned to go
home, where she had several things to see to before lunching at the
Manor; but, pausing, she decided that she would walk round into the
village instead, and see if she could meet Stephen. Perhaps he would be
able to explain Mr. Monckton.

And Catherine did not, after all, get back quicker. No sooner was she
off, at what seemed to her a great pace, than she began to have
misgivings about it, for it occurred to her that on her feet she could
go where she liked, but in Christopher’s side-car she would have to go
where he did.

‘That’s the turning,’ she called out--she found she had to speak very
loud to get heard above the din the thing made--pointing to a road to
the right a short distance ahead.

‘Is it?’ Christopher shouted back; and rushed past it.




XVII


The noise, the shaking, the wind, made it impossible to say much.
Perhaps up there above her on his perch he really didn’t hear; he anyhow
behaved as if he didn’t. Getting no answer to any of the things she
said, she looked up at him. He was intent, bent forward, his mouth tight
shut, and his hair--he had nothing on his head--blown backwards, shining
in the sun.

The anger died from her face. It was so absurd, what was happening to
her, that she couldn’t be angry. All the trouble she had taken to get
away from him, all she had endured and made Stephen and Virginia endure
that week as a result of it, ending like this, in being caught and
carried off in a side-car! Besides, there was something about him
sitting up there in the sun, something in his expression, at once
triumphant and troubled, determined and anxious, happy and scared, that
brought a smile flickering round the corners of her mouth, which,
however, she carefully buried in her scarf.

And as she settled down into the rug, for she couldn’t do anything at
that moment except go, except rush, except be hurtled, as she gave
herself up to this extraordinary temporary abduction, a queer feeling
stole over her as if she had come in out of the cold into a room with a
bright fire in it. Yes, she had been cold; and with Christopher it was
warm. Absurd as it was, she felt she was with somebody of her own age
again.

They were through the village in a flash. Stephen, still on his way to
the sick-bed he was to console, was caught up and passed without his
knowing who was passing. He jumped aside when he heard the noise of
their approach behind him,--quickly, because he was cautious and they
were close, and without looking at them, because motor-cycles and the
ways of young men who used them were repugnant to him.

Christopher rushed past him with a loud hoot. It sounded defiant.
Catherine gathered, from its special violence, that her son-in-law had
been recognised.

The road beyond Chickover winds sweetly among hills. If one continues on
it long enough, that is for twenty miles or so, one comes to the sea.
This was where Christopher took Catherine that morning, not stopping a
moment, nor slowing down except when prudence demanded, nor speaking a
word till he got there. At the bottom of the steep bit at the end, down
which he went carefully, acutely aware of the preciousness of his
passenger, where between grassy banks the road abruptly finishes in
shingle and the sea, he stopped, got off, and came round to unwind her.

This was the moment he was most afraid of.

She looked so very small, rolled round in the rug like a little bolster,
propped up in the side-car, that his heart misgave him worse than ever.
It had been misgiving him without interruption the whole way, but it
misgave him worse than ever now. He felt she was too small to hurt, to
anger, even to ruffle; that it wasn’t fair; that he ought, if he must
attack, attack a woman more his own size.

And she didn’t say anything. She had, he knew, said a good many things
when they passed that turning, none of which he could hear, but since
then she had been silent. She was silent now; only, over the top of her
scarf, which had got pushed up rather funnily round her ears, her eyes
were fixed on him.

‘There. Here we are,’ he said. ‘We can talk here. If you’ll stand up
I’ll get this thing unwound.’

For a moment he thought she was going to refuse to move, but she said
nothing, and let him help her up. She was so tightly rolled round that
it would have been difficult to move by herself.

He took the rug off, and folded it up busily so as not to have to meet
her eyes, for he was afraid.

‘Help me out,’ she said.

He looked her suddenly in the face. ‘I’m glad I did it, anyhow,’ he
said, flinging back his head.

‘Are you?’ she said.

She held out her hand to be helped. She looked rumpled.

‘Your little coat----’ he murmured, pulling it tidy; and he couldn’t
keep his hand from shaking, because he loved her so--‘your little
coat----’ Then he straightened himself, and looked her in the eyes.
‘Catherine, we’ve got to talk,’ he said.

‘Is that why you’ve brought me here?’

‘Yes,’ said Christopher.

‘Do you imagine I’m going to listen?’

‘Yes,’ said Christopher.

‘You don’t feel at all ashamed?’

‘No,’ said Christopher.

She got out, and walked on to the shingle, and stood with her back to
him, apparently considering the view. It was low tide, and the sea lay
a good way off across wet sands. The sheltered bay was very quiet, and
she could hear larks singing above the grassy banks behind her. Dreadful
how little angry she was. She turned her back so as to hide how little
angry she was. She wasn’t really angry at all, and she knew she ought to
be. Christopher ought to be sent away at once and for ever, but there
were two reasons against that,--one that he wouldn’t go, and the other
that she didn’t want him to. Contrary to all right feeling, to all sense
of what was decent, she was amazingly glad to be with him again. She
didn’t do any of the things she ought to do,--flame with anger, wither
him with rebukes. It was shameful, but there it was: she was amazingly
glad to be with him again.

Christopher, watching her, tried to keep up a stout heart. He had had
such a horrible week that whatever happened now couldn’t anyhow be
worse. And she--well, she didn’t look any the happier for it, for
running away from him, either.

He tried to make his voice sound fearless. ‘Catherine, we must talk,’ he
said. ‘It’s no use turning your back on me and staring at the silly
view. You don’t see it, so why pretend?’

She didn’t move. She was wondering at the way her attitude towards him
had developed in this week. All the while she was so indignant with him
she was really getting used to him, getting used to the idea of him.
Helped, of course, by Stephen. Immensely helped by Stephen, and even by
Virginia.

‘I told you you’d never get away from me,’ he said to the back of her
head, putting all he had of defiance into his voice. But he had so
little; it was bluff, sheer bluff, while his heart was ignominiously in
his boots.

‘Your methods amaze me,’ said Catherine to the view.

‘Why did you run away?’

‘Why did you force me to?’

‘Well, it hasn’t been much good, has it, seeing that here we are again.’

‘It hasn’t been the least good.’

‘It never is, unless it’s done in twos. Then I’m all for it. Don’t
forget that next time, will you. And you might also give the poor devil
who is run from a thought. He has the thinnest time. I suppose if I were
to try and tell you the sort of hell he has to endure you wouldn’t even
understand, you untouched little thing,--you self-sufficing little
thing.’

Silence.

Catherine, gazing at the view, was no doubt taking his remarks in. At
least, he hoped so.

‘Won’t you turn round, Catherine?’ he inquired.

‘Yes, when you’re ready to take me back to Chickover.’

‘I’ll be ready to do that when we’ve arrived at some conclusion. Is it
any use my coming round to your other side? We could talk better if we
could see each other’s faces.’

‘No use at all,’ said Catherine.

‘Because you’d only turn your back on me again?’

‘Yes.’

Silence.

‘Aren’t we silly,’ said Christopher.

‘Idiots,’ said Catherine.

Silence.

‘Of course I know you’re very angry with me,’ said Christopher.

‘I’ve been extraordinarily angry with you the whole week,’ said
Catherine.

‘That’s only because you will persist in being unnatural. You’re the
absurdest little bundle of prejudices, and musty old fears. Why on earth
you can’t simply let yourself go----’

Silence.

She, and letting herself go! She struggled to keep her laughter safe
muffled inside her scarf. She hadn’t laughed since last she was with
Christopher. At Chickover nobody laughed. A serious smile from Virginia,
a bright conventional smile from Mrs. Colquhoun, no smile at all from
Stephen; that was the nearest they got to it. Laughter--one of the most
precious of God’s gifts; the very salt, the very light, the very fresh
air of life; the divine disinfectant, the heavenly purge. Could one ever
be real friends with somebody one didn’t laugh with? Of course one
couldn’t. She and Christopher, they laughed. Oh, she had missed him....
But he was so headlong, he was so dangerous, he must be kept so sternly
within what bounds she could get him to stay in.

She therefore continued to turn her back on him, for her face, she knew,
would betray her.

‘You haven’t been happy down here, that I’ll swear,’ said Christopher.
‘I saw it at once in your little face.’

‘You needn’t swear, because I’m not going to pretend anything. I haven’t
been at all happy. I was very angry with you, and I was--lonely.’

‘Lonely?’

‘Yes. One misses--one’s friends.’

‘But you were up to your eyes in relations.’

Silence.

Then Catherine said, ‘I’m beginning to think relations can’t be
friends--neither blood relations, nor relations by marriage.’

‘Would you,’ asked Christopher after a pause, during which he considered
this remark, ‘call a husband a relation by marriage?’

‘It depends,’ said Catherine, ‘whose.’

‘Yours, of course. You know I mean yours.’

She was quiet a moment, then she said cautiously, ‘I’d call him George.’

He took a quick step forward, before she had time to turn away, and
looked at her.

‘You’re laughing,’ he said, his face lighting up. ‘I felt you were. Why,
I don’t believe you’re angry at all--I believe you’re glad I’ve come.
Catherine, you <i>are</i> glad I’ve come. You’re fed up with Stephen and
Virginia, and the old lady with the profile, and I’ve come as a sort of
relief. Isn’t it true? You <i>are</i> glad?’

‘I think they’re rather fed up, as you put it, with me,’ said Catherine
soberly.

‘Fed up with you? They? That ancient, moulting, feathered tribe?’

He stared at her. ‘Then why do you stay till Monday?’ he asked.

‘Because of Virginia.’

‘You mean she, of course, isn’t fed up.’

‘Yes, she is.’

‘She too?’

He tried to take this in. ‘Then why on earth stay?’ he asked again.

‘Because I don’t want her to know I know she <i>is</i> fed up. Christopher,
how catching your language is----’

His face broadened into a grin. ‘Lord,’ he said, ‘these twists-up one
gets into with relations.’

‘Yes,’ agreed Catherine.

‘Thank heaven I haven’t got any.’

‘Yes,’ agreed Catherine; and added with a faint sigh, her eyes on the
distant sea, ‘I oughtn’t to have come at all.’

‘Well, as though that wasn’t abundantly clear from the first.’

‘I mean, because young people should be left undisturbed.’

‘Young people! Stephen?’

‘Well, young couples.’

‘He isn’t a young couple.’

‘Virginia has made him young. They ought to be left to themselves. It
isn’t that Virginia doesn’t love me--it’s that she loves Stephen more,
and wants to be alone with him.’

‘She’s a horrid girl,’ said Christopher with conviction.

‘She’s mine,’ said Catherine, ‘and I love her. Don’t forget that,
please. It’s very important in my life.’

He took her hands and kissed them. ‘I adore you,’ he said simply.

‘Well, it’s not much good doing that,’ she said.

‘Doing what?’

‘Adoring somebody old enough to be your mother.’

‘Mothers be damned,’ said Christopher.

‘Oh, that’s what I’ve been thinking all the week!’ cried Catherine,--and
then looked so much shocked at herself that Christopher burst out
laughing, and so, after a minute, did she, and they stood there
laughing, he holding both her hands, and happiness coming back to them
in waves.

‘Aren’t we friends,’ she said, looking at him in a kind of glad
surprise.

‘Aren’t we,’ said Christopher, kissing her hands again.

They wandered along the sands for a little after that, after their
simultaneous laughter had loosened them from their reserves and fears,
both feeling that an immense stride had been made in intimacy.
Catherine, as they wandered, expounded her view of the nature and
manifestations of true friendship, as other women have done on similar
occasions, and Christopher, even as other men on such occasions,
pretended that he thought just like that too.

He wasn’t going to frighten her away again. She had been flung back to
him in this unexpected frame of mind, this state of relief and gladness,
because it happened that Stephen was Stephen and Virginia was
Virginia,--but suppose she had chanced to run to appreciative friends,
friends delighted to have her, who petted her and made her happy, to the
enthusiastic Fanshawes, for instance, he would have had a poor hope of
anything but being avoided for the rest of his life. And he had
suffered, suffered. It had been the blackest week of misery. He wasn’t
going to risk any more of it. He would walk along the sands with her and
talk carefully with her of friendship.

And Catherine, used only to George, and without experience of the
endless variety of the approaches and disguises of love, was delighted
with Christopher, and felt every minute more reassured and safe. He
agreed, it appeared, completely with her that in a world where nobody
can get everything it is better to take something rather than have
nothing, and that friendship between a man and a woman, even a warm one,
is perfectly possible,--only reverting to his more violent way of speech
when she added, ‘Especially at our unequal ages,’ upon which he said, in
his earlier manner, ‘Oh, damn unequal ages.’

For a moment he had difficulty in not holding forth on this subject, and
her ridiculous obsession by it, but stopped himself. He wasn’t going to
spoil this. It was too happy, this wandering alone together on those
blessed solitary sands,--too, too happy, after the dark torments of the
week, to risk spoiling it. Let her say what she liked. Let her coo away
about being friends; in another moment she would probably assure him
that she would like to be his sister, his own dear sister, or his mother
to whom he could always turn in trouble, or some absurd female relation
of that sort. He wouldn’t stop her. He would only listen and laugh
inside himself. His Catherine. His love. As sure as she walked there, as
sure as there behind her, reaching farther and farther back, was a
double ribbon of her little wobbly footprints in the sand, she was his
love. And presently she too would know it, and all the sister and mother
and friend talk go the way such talk always went, and be remembered some
day only with wonder and smiles.

‘Catherine,’ he said, ‘just to walk with you makes me so happy that it’s
as clear as God’s daylight we’re the wonderfullest, most harmonious of
friends.’

The <i>relief</i> of being with Christopher! To be wanted again, to have some
one pleased to be with her, preferring to be with her than anywhere else
in the world,--what a contrast to her recent experiences at Chickover.
She no longer had the amused feeling of gratified vanity that had
warmed her in London before he began to behave badly; what she felt now
was much simpler and more sincere,--not trivial like that. They had both
been through their rages, and had come out into this fresh air, these
sunlit waters. They were friends.

‘I’m so glad I came away,’ she said, smiling up at him; and she very
nearly added, as she looked at him and saw him such a part of the
morning, and of the fresh sea and the clear light, so bright-haired and
young-limbed, ‘I do <i>love</i> you, Christopher----’ but was afraid he
would misunderstand. Which he certainly would have.

They arranged, before they turned back, that he should drive her up to
London that afternoon. Her luggage could be sent by train. It seemed
silly, he said, to stay till Monday when she didn’t want to, and
Virginia didn’t want her to, and nobody wanted her to, while in London
there were her friends, all wanting her----

‘One friend,’ she smiled.

‘Well, one friend is enough to change the world.’

‘Oh <i>yes</i>,’ she agreed, her eyes shining.

Still, it would be difficult, she said. Virginia would be astonished at
the motor-cycle----

‘She knows all about that by now,’ said Christopher. ‘You bet the old
lady has told her about it long ago. Rushed straight round on purpose.’

Well then, in that case, on the principle of being hung for a whole
sheep while one was about it, Catherine thought she might as well drive
up with him that day. Especially----

‘Now don’t say especially at our ages.’

‘I wasn’t going to. I was going to say, especially as it will make
everybody happy all round.’

‘Yes, my love--I mean, my friend. Even though they won’t admit it,’ said
Christopher.

He was to leave her, they decided, at the Chickover gates, and at lunch
she would explain him to Virginia, and then he would call for her at two
o’clock and take her away. Introduced, however, to Virginia first.

‘Must I be?’ he asked.

‘Of course,’ said Catherine.

With what different feelings did Christopher pack her up in the rug this
time. There was no fear now, no anxiety. She laughed, and was the
Catherine of the afternoon at Hampton Court,--only come so much nearer,
come so close up to him, come indeed, and of her own accord, almost
right into his heart.

‘My blessed little angel,’ he thought, propping her up in the seat when
she was wound round and couldn’t move her arms; and her eyes were so
bright, and her face so different from the face that he had seen in
church two hours before, that he said, ‘You looked ten years older this
morning than you did in London, and now you look twenty years younger
than you did then.’

‘What age does that make me?’ she asked, laughing up at him.

‘So you see,’ he said, ignoring this, ‘how wholesome, how necessary it
is to be with one’s friend.’




XVIII


Meanwhile the morning at the Manor was passing in its usual quiet yet
busy dignity. Virginia attended to her household duties, while her
mother and Stephen were at church, and herself cut the sandwiches that
Stephen was to take up with him to London, because the ones the week
before had been, he told her, highly unsatisfactory.

The cook looked on with the expression natural to cooks in such
circumstances, and Virginia, who had never made sandwiches, but knew
what they ought to taste like, was disconcerted by their appearance when
she had done.

‘It’s how the master likes them,’ she said rather uncertainly, as she
herself arranged the strange-shaped things in the aluminium box they
were to travel in.

‘Yes, m’m,’ said the cook.

She came out of the kitchen and into her own part of the house with a
sigh of relief. It was always a relief to get through those baize doors.
The servants made her shy. She wasn’t able, somehow, to get into touch
with them. What she aimed at in her relations with them was perfect
justice and kindness, combined with dignity. She most earnestly wished
to do her duty by them, and in return it seemed merely fair to demand
that they should do their duty by her. Her mother’s reign had been lax.
She had found, on looking into things on her marriage, many abuses.
These she had removed one by one, and after much trouble had put the
whole household on a decent economic footing.

Up to now the servants hadn’t quite settled down to it, but her
mother-in-law, who was experienced in frugalities, assured her they
would in time, and be all the happier and the better for it. She had
gone so far as to explain to them, her serious young face firm in the
belief that once they were told they would understand and even
co-operate, that the more carefully the house was run the more would the
poor, the sick, and the aged of the parish benefit. ‘No one,’ she said,
earnestly striving to make herself clear, ‘has more than a certain
amount of money to spend, and if it is spent in one way it can’t
possibly be spent in another.’

The servants were silent.

She even tried, overcoming her shyness, to talk to them of noble aims,
and love for one’s fellow-creatures.

The servants continued silent.

She went further, and in a voice that faltered because of her extreme
desire to run away and hide, talked to them of God.

The servants became really terribly silent.

Carrying her aluminium box, she passed on this Saturday morning, with
her customary sigh of relief, through the baize doors that separated the
domestic part of the house from the part where one was happy, and went
into the study to put the sandwiches in Stephen’s suit-case, along with
his sermons and pyjamas. He, she knew, would only be back a short time
before starting for the station, because of the sick-bed he had to
visit, poor Stephen, but her mother would be back.

Virginia had made up her mind to devote herself entirely this week-end
to her mother, and do her best to remove any suspicion she might have
that she had not been, perhaps, quite wanted; and having shut the
sandwiches in the suit-case she went in search of her.

Poor mother. Virginia wished, with a sigh, that she need never be hurt.
She was so kind, and so often so sweet. But what problems mothers were
after a certain age! Unless they were as perfectly sensible as
Stephen’s, or else were truly religious. Religion, of course, was what
was most needed, especially when one was old. Virginia had, however,
long felt that her mother was not truly religious--not truly and
seriously, as she and Stephen were. No doubt she thought she was, and
perhaps she was, in some queer way; but were queer ways of being
religious permissible? Weren’t they as bad, really, as no ways at all?

Virginia sighed again. One did so long to be able to look up to one’s
mother, to revere....

The house seemed empty. All the big rooms, glanced into one after the
other, were empty. Nothing in them but the mild spring sunshine, and
furniture, and silence.

She went upstairs, but in her mother’s bedroom was only Ellen, arranging
another bunch of flowers--another, when yesterday’s were still perfectly
good--on the writing-table. Stephen disliked flowers in bedrooms, but
suppose he hadn’t, would Ellen so assiduously see that they were always
fresh? Virginia thought she wouldn’t, and very much wished at that
moment to point out the extravagance of picking flowers unnecessarily at
a time of year when they were scarce; but she was handicapped by their
being for her mother.

She said nothing, therefore, and went away, and Ellen was relieved when
she went. Just as Virginia was relieved when she got away from the
servants, so were the servants relieved when they saw her go.

She fetched a wrap from her bedroom--the room already looked forlorn, as
if it knew it was to be empty of Stephen for two whole nights--and went
downstairs and out on to the terrace. Probably her mother was lingering
in the garden this mild morning, and Virginia took two or three turns up
and down, expecting every moment to see her approaching along some path.

Nobody approached, however: the garden remained as empty as the house.
And time was passing; Stephen would be due soon to come back; her mother
would want to say good-bye to him, and couldn’t have gone for a walk on
this morning of departure. She would particularly want to say good-bye,
quite apart from the fact that she would be gone before his return on
Monday, because she wasn’t letting him stay in Hertford Street over the
week-end. Stephen did so hate hotels. It seemed hard when no one was in
the flat that he couldn’t use it. Her mother had made excuses--said
something or other about Mrs. Mitcham having a holiday, but Virginia
didn’t think she had felt quite comfortable about it. She would
therefore certainly wish to make him some parting little speech of more
than ordinary gratitude for his hospitality, seeing how from him she was
withholding hers. And here was Stephen, coming across the grass, and in
a few minutes he would have started, and her mother still nowhere to be
seen.

‘What has become of mother?’ she called, when he was within earshot.

He didn’t answer till he was close to her. Then he said, looking
worried, ‘Isn’t she back yet?’

‘No. Where is she?’

He stared at Virginia a moment, then made a gesture of extreme
impatience. ‘I can’t imagine,’ he said, pulling out his watch and
beginning to walk quickly across the terrace to the open windows of the
drawing-room, for he hadn’t much time, he saw, before his train left,
‘what possessed your mother.’

‘Possessed her?’ echoed Virginia, her eyes and mouth all astonishment.

‘Anything more unsuitable----’ said Stephen, quickly going through the
drawing-room, followed by Virginia. ‘Tut, tut,’ he finished, in a most
strange way.

Virginia’s heart gave a queer kind of drop. ‘Unsuitable?’ she repeated
faintly.

It was the word of all others she dreaded hearing applied to her mother,
and applied by Stephen. She herself had felt many little things
unsuitable in her mother during this visit, the first real visit since
her marriage, but she had so much hoped Stephen hadn’t noticed, and she
did so much want him to continue in the warm respect and admiration for
her mother he had felt before. What had she done now? What could she
have done to produce this fluster of annoyance in the quiet, controlled
Stephen?

‘She all but ran over me in my own village street,’ he said, going into
the study and hastily collecting his things.

Virginia could only again echo. ‘All but ran over you?’ she repeated
blankly.

‘Yes. You know how strongly I feel about motor-cycles, and the type of
scallywag youth who uses them. Where is my muffler?’

‘Motor-cycles?’ said Virginia, her mouth open.

‘I naturally hadn’t the remotest idea it could be your mother, but
mother--our mother--met me and told me--yes, yes, Kate, I know--I’m
coming immediately. Good-bye, my love--I shall miss my train----’

‘But Stephen----’

‘Mother will tell you. Really I find the utmost difficulty in believing
it. And not back yet. Still scorching----’

He was out in the hall; he was in the car; he was gone.

Virginia stood staring after him. Stephen gone, and in such a way. No
good-bye hardly, no lingering, sweet farewell, nothing but hurry and
upset. What had happened? What had her mother done?

His incredible last word beat on her ears--scorching. She wished she had
flung herself into the car and gone with him to the station, and so at
least had a little more time to be told things. But Stephen disliked
impetuosity, and, for that matter, so did she. There were, however,
moments in life when indulgence in it was positively right.

Virginia stood there feeling perhaps more unhappy than she had ever yet
felt. One couldn’t have a mother all one’s life and not be attached to
her; at least, she couldn’t. She was made up of loyalties. They differed
in intensity, but each in its degree was complete. Passionately she
wanted the objects of her loyalties to have the invulnerableness of
perfection. Stephen had it. She had supposed, till this last visit, that
her mother had it--in an entirely different line, of course, with all
sorts of little things about her Virginia didn’t understand but was
willing to accept as also, in their way, in their different way, good.
<i>There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon</i>,
Virginia, observing her mother, had sometimes quoted to herself. Both of
them glories, but different,--greater and lesser. Stephen had the glory
of the sun; her mother had the moon one. During this unlucky visit,
though, how had it not, thought Virginia standing on the steps, looking
down the empty avenue, been obscured. And now, just at the end, just as
she was going to make such an effort to set everything right again, her
mother had evidently done something definitely dreadful, with a
motor-cycle. Her mother, her mouse-like mother. What could she
<i>possibly</i>....

She turned away and went indoors, her eyes fixed on the carpet, her
brows knitted in painfullest perplexity.

Should she go and meet Stephen’s mother, who was coming to lunch and
evidently knew what had happened? There was still half an hour before
lunch, and before Stephen’s mother, who never came a minute sooner or a
minute later than the exact appointed time, would arrive. But her own
mother might come back at any moment, and it would be better to hear
things from her, wouldn’t it, than from Stephen’s mother. She was very
fond of Stephen’s mother,--indeed, how should she not be, when he
was?--and admired her many qualities excessively, but she didn’t love
her as she did her own mother. One began so young with one’s own mother,
of course one felt differently about her from what one did about any one
else’s. She shrank from hearing, from Stephen’s mother, whatever it was
her own mother had done.

Family pride, loyalty, and the queer little ache of love, sometimes
disapproving, sometimes wistful, sometimes disappointed, sometimes
pitiful, but always love, that she felt for her mother, made her not
want to hear Stephen’s mother tell her what had happened. Stephen was
different. If he told and blamed he had a right to, he belonged. It
would be painful to her to the point of agony, seeing how much she loved
them both, but he had the right. His mother, though, hadn’t. She felt
she couldn’t bear to listen to even the most tactful disapproval from
his mother. No, she wouldn’t go to meet her. Her mother would certainly
be in in time for lunch, and get there before Stephen’s mother. Oh, all
these mothers! There were too many of them, Virginia thought with sudden
impatience, and then was ashamed,--she, the wife of one of God’s
priests.

The drawing-room door was open, and opposite it was the widely-flung-up
William and Mary window, and through the window she saw, coming across
the terrace and walking with even more than her usual briskness,
Stephen’s mother.

Such a thing had never happened before, that she should arrive before
her time. <i>What</i> had her mother done?

Virginia stood in the hall, rooted, wanting to run up to her bedroom and
hide, but unable to make up her mind quickly enough, and Mrs. Colquhoun
saw her the minute she was through the window, and it was too late.

‘Oh, my dear Virginia,’ she cried out, ‘I am concerned for your mother.
I hope she got home safely? I couldn’t rest. I had to come and hear that
she wasn’t too much shaken. The young man went off at such a pace. And
Stephen told me they nearly ran over him in the village. I thought it so
courageous of Mrs. Cumfrit. I do hope she is none the worse?’

‘I haven’t seen mother yet,’ said Virginia, getting nearer prevarication
than in her transparent life she had yet been.

But Mrs. Colquhoun was not to be put off by prevarication. ‘What? Isn’t
she back?’ she exclaimed.

‘I haven’t seen her,’ said Virginia obstinately.

Mrs. Colquhoun stared at her. ‘But then, where----?’ she began.

‘I don’t see,’ said Virginia, very red, and straight of eyebrow, ‘why
mother shouldn’t motor-cycle if she wants to.’

‘But of <i>course</i> not. <i>Certainly</i> not. And Mr. Monckton is an old
friend, isn’t he--that’s to say, as old a friend as one can be at such a
very young age. I expect he’s your friend really, isn’t he? Though I
don’t remember seeing him at Chickover before.’

‘Tell me what happened, mother,’ said Virginia, leading the way to her
boudoir.

‘But is Mrs. Cumfrit safely back yet? That’s what I’m really anxious to
hear,’ said Mrs. Colquhoun, taking off her gloves and woollen scarf, and
sitting as far from the fire as she could, so as to convey, with the
delicacy of action rather than the clumsiness of words, that a fire on
such a sunny morning was unnecessary.

‘No,’ said Virginia.

‘Well, you mustn’t be agitated, dearest child. Mr. Monckton is a safe
rider, I’m sure. And careful. Young, of course, and in so far
headstrong, but I’m sure careful. Especially when taking some one of
your mother’s age with him. How long have you known him?’

‘I haven’t known him,’ said Virginia stiffly.

She wouldn’t admit to herself that all this amazed and shook her. She
would let no thought get through into her mind except that it was
natural and perfectly ordinary, if one wanted to, to go off
motor-cycling, natural and perfectly ordinary for anybody, her mother
included.

‘Not known him?’ exclaimed Mrs. Colquhoun.

‘Mother has many friends I haven’t met,’ said Virginia, sitting very
straight.

‘Quite. Of course. In London.’

‘Yes. You haven’t told me what happened, mother.’

‘Well, this <i>very</i> tall and <i>quite</i> good-looking Mr. Monckton was
waiting in the churchyard at your poor father’s tomb, when we came out
after the service----’

‘Waiting for mother?’

‘Yes. He said he had come down on purpose to drive her up to London in
his side-car----’

‘But mother isn’t going till Monday.’

‘Exactly. Nor, he said, was he. His motor-cycle was outside the gate,
and he persuaded your mother to get in and let him drive her back here,
and she did, and off they went. Off, really, like a flash. Such courage
in your dear mother. I did so admire it at her age. Perfectly splendid,
I thought. It means, you know, Virginia, vitality--the most important of
all possessions. Without it one can do nothing. With it one can do
everything. However--to go on. I watched them, and saw they didn’t take
the first turning home, and then I met Stephen in the village, and they
had been through it and just missed running over him by inches. Now,
now, Virginia, don’t turn pale, dear child. They didn’t run over him, or
of course I wouldn’t have told you. Now, my dearest child, there’s
nothing at all exciting and upsetting in this, so don’t allow yourself
to be upset. It’s very bad for you, you know----’

‘I’m not upset, mother. Why should I be?’ said Virginia, holding herself
up. She hadn’t been able to help turning pale at the terrible idea of
Stephen so narrowly missing being run over by her mother--oh, what a
horrible combination of circumstances!--but what else, she asked
herself, was there to mind in this? Why shouldn’t her mother, meeting a
friend, go for a little turn in his side-car on such a fine morning?

‘I never knew your mother do anything in the least like this before,’
said Mrs. Colquhoun.

‘No,’ said Virginia. ‘But don’t you think there always has to be a
beginning?’

‘A beginning?’

Mrs. Colquhoun was surprised. Virginia was almost arguing with her.
Besides, it was an unexpected view to take. Beginnings were not
suitable, she felt, after a certain age, especially not for women.
Mothers of the married, such as herself and Mrs. Cumfrit, should be
concerned rather with endings than beginnings.

But she would not be anything but broad-minded; she was determined to
remain, however much surprised, broad-minded. So she said, ‘Certainly,’
with hearty agreement. And repeated, ‘Certainly. Certainly there must be
a beginning. Always. To everything. Only--I was wondering whether
perhaps--well, anyhow it shows a wonderful vitality, and as no one
recognised your mother in the village----’

‘Is it wrong to go in a side-car?’ asked Virginia, again surprisingly.

‘My dearest child, of course not. It’s only that--well, it’s a little
unusual for your mother. It’s not quite what people here are used to in
her, is it. It’s a--a young thing to do. Girls go in side-cars, and
other wild young persons, but not--well, as I say, one can but admire
such vitality and courage. I confess I wouldn’t have dared. I do believe
there isn’t the young man living who could have induced me to.’

Virginia felt very unhappy. Fancy having to sit there defending her
mother--her <i>mother</i>, who had always been on such a pinnacle. It was
like a bad dream. And where was she? Why didn’t she come back? Suppose
something had happened to her? Something must have happened to her, or
surely she wouldn’t have missed saying good-bye to Stephen?

A sick little fear began to creep round Virginia’s heart. She hadn’t
much imagination; she didn’t dramatically visualise an accident, her
mother lying crumpled up and lifeless in some lonely lane, but she did
think it possible something unpleasant might have happened, and it made
her look with very wide, anxious eyes at Mrs. Colquhoun, and wonder what
in the world it could matter really whether her mother got into fifty
side-cars and rushed through fifty villages as long as she safely got
out of them again.

The gong sounded.

‘Lunch,’ said Mrs. Colquhoun brightly, for Virginia’s expression rather
startled her, and it was above all things necessary that the child
should, in her present condition, be kept calm. ‘Shall you wait?’

‘Listen,’ said Virginia, holding up her hand.

In another moment Mrs. Colquhoun heard it too--the noise of a
motor-cycle, far away but coming nearer.

‘What quick ears,’ she smilingly congratulated her daughter-in-law; but
Virginia was on her feet, and running out to meet her mother.

She ran through the hall and on to the steps, expecting to see the
motor-cycle careering along the avenue; and there was nothing to be
seen, and the noise had left off too. It must have been some one else’s.
The avenue was empty.

She stood staring down it, thrown back on her fears. Then in the
distance, round the bend, she saw a small figure walking quickly towards
the house. It was her mother, safe and sound.

Virginia’s immediate impulse in her glad relief was to run down the
steps to meet her and hug her, but instantly the reaction set in.
Nothing had happened, her mother was unharmed, and it was really too bad
that she should have gone in the foolish side-car. One surely had a
right to expect at least dignity in one’s mother, a sense of the
suitable; especially when she belonged, too, to Stephen, a man in a
public position, with a sacred calling.

Sore and puzzled, Virginia stood stiffly on the steps. Her mother came
along very quickly and lightly, like a little leaf being blown up the
avenue; and when she got nearer, and began to wave her hand with what
appeared to be, and no doubt was, forced gaiety, Virginia noticed her
face had the look on it she had seen once before during this unfortunate
visit, the look of a child caught by its elders stealing the jam.




XIX


Catherine had walked very fast up the avenue, afraid she was late. Her
face was hot with exercise, and her eyes bright with Christopher. She
didn’t look like the same person who had set out that morning, listless
and pale, with Stephen for church. She had somehow entirely wiped out
Christopher’s behaviour in London, and felt she had started again with
him on a new footing. She was happy, and wanted to tell Virginia of her
new arrangements quickly, before their naturalness and desirability, so
evident and clear while she was with Christopher, had faded and become
obscure. She felt they might do that rather easily without him,
especially as Mrs. Colquhoun was going to be at lunch.

She must be quick, while she still saw plain. Everybody wanted her to
go, and she wanted to go; then why not go? Yes, but they wouldn’t be
able to let her go without criticism, without disapproval. Dear me, she
thought, how pleasant to be quite simple and straight. How pleasant to
be free from sentimentalism, and all its grievances and tender places.
How very pleasant not to mind if one’s children did sometimes get bored
with one, and for them not to mind if you sometimes got bored with them.

She laughed a little at these aspirations, as she hurried towards her
tall, unmoving daughter and waved her hand in greeting, because they
sounded so very like a desire to be free of family life altogether. And
she didn’t desire to be free of it, she clung to what remained of it for
her, she clung to Virginia, her last shred of it, however different they
were, however deeply they didn’t understand each other. Blood; strange,
compelling, unbreakable link. Could one forget that that tall creature
there, so aloof, so critical, had once been tiny and helpless, depending
on her for her very life?

A fresh wave of love for her daughter washed over her. She felt so able
to love and be happy at that moment. ‘I’m late--I know I’m late,’ she
said breathlessly, running up the steps and kissing her. ‘Did you think
I was lost, darling?’

‘I was afraid something might have happened, mother,’ said Virginia,
very stiff and grave.

‘Darling--I’m so sorry. It didn’t upset you?’

‘I was a little afraid. But it’s all right now that you’ve come back.
Lunch is ready, and mother is waiting. Shall we go in?’

‘She will have told you, hasn’t she, of my escapade,’ said Catherine a
little nervously as they went indoors, for Virginia was so very grave.

‘I hope you had a pleasant drive,’ said Virginia, wincing at the word
escapade. Mothers didn’t have escapades. Such things were for them, and
indeed for most people who wished to live the lives of plain Christians,
unsuitable.

She ached with different emotions. The only way to keep her feelings out
of sight, safely hidden, was to encase herself in ice.

She sat at the head of the table, a mother on either hand, and helped
them in turn icily to mince. On the Saturdays of Stephen’s absences both
parlourmaids, once he had been seen off, were given a holiday, and the
dishes were placed on the table by Ellen. There was always mince for
lunch on these Saturdays, because mince rested the cook. Also, it didn’t
have to be carved. But it is not a food to promote good-fellowship;
impossible to be really convivial on mince. The three, however, wouldn’t
have been convivial that day even if the table had been covered with,
say, quails; for in the consciousness of each was, enormous and vivid,
that side-car and the young man who belonged to it.

Both Virginia and Mrs. Colquhoun earnestly desired that neither it nor
he should be mentioned during lunch, because of Ellen, and Mrs.
Colquhoun did her best to talk well and brightly about everything except
just that. But Catherine was anxious to tell them quickly, before she
became any more congealed, what was going to happen next. She knew it
was past one already, and that at two Christopher and the motor-cycle
would appear to fetch her, and that the entire household would be aware
of her departure in the side-car. She was obliged to talk of it, and at
the very first pause in Mrs. Colquhoun’s conversation began to do so.

How difficult it was. Worse than she had feared. Her cheeks got hotter.
Virginia’s face, and her grieved, astonished eyes, made her stammer. And
Mrs. Colquhoun, when she heard of the drive planned for that afternoon
to London, on top of the drive that morning to goodness knew where,
merely raised her hands and ejaculated ‘Insatiable!’

For some reason Catherine found this brief ejaculation curiously
disconcerting.

‘If you must go to-day, mother,’ said Virginia, stung and perplexed,
‘you might have gone with Stephen.’

‘Ah, but the fresh air, dear child--the fresh air,’ cried Mrs.
Colquhoun, desiring to do what she could for her colleague in the eyes
of Ellen. ‘Your mother looks a different creature already, after just
her outing this morning. There’s nothing like fresh air. Air, air--it’s
what we all need. And our windows----’ she glanced severely at Ellen,
‘opened <i>wide</i> at night.’

‘Besides,’ went on the wounded Virginia, ‘I thought you said Mrs.
Mitcham was having a holiday.’

‘Darling, I <i>must</i> go up,’ murmured Catherine, mechanically eating
mince. She couldn’t now go into what she had said about Mrs. Mitcham;
she didn’t remember what she had said, and she couldn’t get involved in
explanations, for if once she began there would be no end to them.
‘I--well, I must. I’ve been away from home so long this time.’

No, she didn’t know what to say. She had nothing to say. There was no
reason nor explanation in the least suited to either Virginia’s or Mrs.
Colquhoun’s ears. It was strange how people, when they were getting what
they really wanted, yet disapproved, yet didn’t like it, she thought.

‘Of course, of course,’ said Mrs. Colquhoun heartily, desirous of
dropping the subject as soon as possible because of Ellen. ‘Homes can’t
be left. Homes are there so as <i>not</i> to be left. Or why have them? I do
so approve, dear Mrs. Cumfrit. We shall miss you, of course, but I do so
approve.’

She leant across the table and smiled. She had put the seal on her
colleague; she had wrapped her in her own cloak. The servants, in the
face of such protection, would be able to notice and wonder nothing.

They had prunes to finish up with. Nobody is long over prunes, and the
three were out of the dining-room twenty minutes after they had gone
into it.

Catherine went upstairs to see, she said, to her things. Virginia
followed her. Mrs. Colquhoun assured them she didn’t mind being left,
that she was never dull alone, would wait quite happily in the
drawing-room, and they were not to give her a thought.

‘Mother----’ began Virginia, when they had got into the bedroom, her
eyes dark with perplexity.

‘You don’t mind, darling?’ said Catherine, putting her arm round her. ‘I
mean, my going all of a sudden like this?’

Then she laughed a little. ‘I came all of a sudden, and I’m going all of
a sudden,’ she said. ‘Am I a very uncomfortable sort of mother to have?’

Virginia flushed a deep red. How could she say Yes, which was the truth?
How could she say No, which was a lie?

‘Mother,’ she said painfully, for the question insisted on forcing its
way through her protective coating of ice, ‘you’re not going away to-day
because you think--because you think----’

She stopped, and looked at her mother.

And Catherine, as unable not to lie when it came to either lying or
hurting, as Virginia was unable, faced by such an alternative, to be
anything but stonily silent, kissed her softly on each cheek and said,
‘No, darling, I’m not. And I don’t think anything.’

It wasn’t quite a lie. She wasn’t going away that day because of
Virginia; she was going away now because of Christopher. Life was
intricate. Lies were so much mixed up with truth. And as for love, it
got into everything, and wherever it was one seemed to have to lie. Ah,
to be able to be simple and straight. The one thing that appeared to be
really simple and straight and easy was ordinary, affectionate
friendship. Not too affectionate; not, either, too ordinary; but warm,
and steady, and understanding. In fact, what hers and Christopher’s was
going to be.

Ellen came in and asked if she should pack. Nothing had been said to
Ellen, Virginia knew, yet here she was, full of a devotion she never
showed in her ordinary work.

Catherine explained that she couldn’t take her luggage with her, and
Ellen said, just as if Catherine were still her mistress and Virginia
still a little girl, that she would see that it went up by the next
train. She then got out Catherine’s fur coat, and gave her her gloves
and a thick veil, and insisted that she should wear gaiters, kneeling
down and buttoning them for her.

Virginia might have been a stranger standing looking on. And her mother
was laughing and talking to Ellen, rather after the fashion of a child
going off for a holiday. In a way it was a relief, because it did seem
as if she hadn’t noticed anything, but it was an odd mood in her mother;
Virginia couldn’t remember any mood quite like it.

‘I’ll go down to mother,’ she said, taking refuge in the other one.

‘Do, darling,’ said Catherine, busy being buttoned up.

And Virginia, going down into the drawing-room, found a young man in
brown leather there, being talked to by Mrs. Colquhoun, who turned round
quickly when she came in, and whose face changed from eager to rather
disagreeable, she thought, when he saw her.

‘This, Virginia, my child,’ said Mrs. Colquhoun with even more than her
usual briskness, ‘is your mother’s old friend Mr. Monckton. Mr.
Monckton, this is my daughter-in-law, Mrs. Stephen Colquhoun. Conceive
its falling to my lot to make you two acquainted! I should have thought
you would have lisped together in infant numbers, tumbled about like
puppies together on lawns, been nursed upon the self-same hill. I hope,
Mr. Monckton, you admire with me the poet I am quoting from?’

No; young people could never remain shy long when she was there. Yet
presently she had to admit that with these two, anyhow, it was heavy
going. They couldn’t be got to talk to each other. Dear little Virginia,
of course, never did go in much for small chat, and Mr. Monckton’s
disposition appeared after all not to correspond with his glowing
exterior. He was as silent as if he had been puny and sallow. A picture
of splendid youth, standing there on the hearth-rug--he wouldn’t sit
down, he wouldn’t have coffee, he wouldn’t smoke, he wouldn’t talk, he
wouldn’t do anything--he seemed to have really nothing in him. Except
perhaps obstinacy; and possibly a hasty temper. Who and what he was, and
why Mrs. Cumfrit should be friends with him, she couldn’t imagine. To
all her questions--of course, tactfully put--he only made evasive
answers, chiefly in monosyllables. Little Virginia was as silent as he
was. Indeed, she seemed to take a dislike to him from the first. Later
on, describing the meeting to her friends, Mrs. Colquhoun was fond of
dwelling on the unerring instinct of that dear child.

‘We ought to be starting,’ said Christopher, looking at his wrist-watch.

It was intolerable to him being there alone with these two women, in the
house that used to be Catherine’s, faced by the girl who was, he was
certain, the living image of George, and who stood watching him with
great critical eyes while the old lady enfiladed him with a non-stopping
fire of God knew what.

‘I wish you’d tell your mother,’ he said, turning with a quick movement
of impatience to Virginia.

She stared at him a moment without answering. Then she said slowly, ‘My
mother will come when she is ready.’

‘Hoity toity,’ Christopher all but said aloud; and added under his
breath, ‘young Miss.’

Then he remembered that she wasn’t a Miss at all, but the wife of that
ancient bustard Stephen. Horrible as it was of her to go and marry
anybody so moth-eaten with age, it yet gave him an argument, and a very
mighty one, to use against Catherine when occasion should--and
would--arise. In as far as this went, he was much obliged to Virginia;
but except for this he didn’t mind admitting that he regarded her with
aversion. She oughtn’t to be there at all. Unborn, she would have been
perfectly all right and comfortable, and Catherine wouldn’t have had any
of her ideas about being the mother of a married daughter, and what
would Virginia say, and all such stuff. Directly he saw the girl, and
her cold eyes and her determined mouth, he knew he was going to have
trouble with Catherine when things had reached their crisis--as they
were bound to do--about what Virginia would say, and think, and feel. He
knew it, he knew it.

‘Oh, damn----’ he muttered; and jerked up his elbow to look at his
wrist-watch again.

‘If your mother doesn’t come soon,’ he said, ‘I see no prospect of our
reaching London to-night.’ And to himself, spirit grinning, he added,
‘That’ll fetch them.’

It did.

‘Really, Virginia,’ Mrs. Colquhoun instantly said, turning to her with a
kind of shocked bristling, ‘do go up and tell your mother she must
hurry. Or shall I? The stairs----’

But there was Catherine, coming in like light and warmth, he thought,
into a dark and frost-bound place.

‘Oh, Christopher!’ she exclaimed in her surprise at seeing him
there--(‘Christopher,’ noted Mrs. Colquhoun)--‘You here already? I
didn’t hear you arrive. Aren’t you very early?’

‘Far from being very early,’ said Mrs. Colquhoun, rising from her chair
preparatory to going into the hall to witness this unique departure,
‘Mr. Monckton says it is very late. Hardly time, indeed, to get to
London.’

‘Oh, but let us go at once, then. Have you been introduced to Virginia?
Oh, yes, I’ve got a fur coat--it’s in the hall. Virginia darling, take
care of yourself, won’t you. Good-bye, Mrs. Colquhoun--oh yes, I know
you will--I do know she is perfectly safe in your hands. And whenever
you want me, dearest--when<i>ever</i> you want me, you’ve only got to send me
one little word, and I’ll come.’

‘Sweet of you, mother.’

Even with her mother the girl was like a poker--a cold poker, thought
Christopher, who felt he might have forgiven her being a poker if only
she had been a red hot one. But how excessively he hated all this, how
excessively he hated seeing Catherine in these relationships. Why had
she made him come in? Why need he ever have seen Virginia, and been
introduced, and have to make the fool grimaces of convention? Well, he
would soon have put miles between themselves and Chickover, and he
fervently hoped he might never see the beastly place again.

Once more he tucked Catherine in the rug up to her chin. This time she
was laughing. The two women on the steps, watching the departure,
weren’t laughing. Virginia’s face was expressionless; Mrs. Colquhoun’s
had the smile on it of hospitality got down to its dregs--the fixed
smile of determination not to relax one hairs-breadth of proper
geniality till the door was shut and the guest round the corner. On her
son’s behalf, she told herself, she saw his late guest off. Virginia, of
course, was doing it on her own behalf, but Mrs. Colquhoun was even more
important, for she represented the master of the house. How thankful she
was that he wasn’t there to do it himself. What would he have thought of
it all?

She put on her eyeglasses in order to see better what was going on down
there. The young man, busy with the rug, no longer looked as he had
looked in the drawing-room; his face now shone with smiles. So did Mrs.
Cumfrit’s. Mrs. Colquhoun could not help being struck by this air of
gaiety. And she remembered Mrs. Cumfrit’s yellowness and fatigue on her
arrival the previous Sunday, and the way she had remained yellow and had
got visibly older all the week, ending up in church that morning by
being on the verge either of being sick or fainting--perhaps both. There
was no sign of this now. On the contrary, she looked remarkably healthy.
Odd; very odd.

‘Oh--<i>good</i>-bye. <i>Good</i>-bye. Now, Mr. Monckton, be very careful, won’t
you----’

They were gone. In an instant, it seemed, they were a speck down the
avenue, and then the bend hid them, the sound of them died away, and she
and Virginia had Chickover to themselves again.

The word harum-scarum entered Mrs. Colquhoun’s mind. She dismissed it.
She couldn’t admit a word like that in connection with her Stephen’s
mother-in-law.

She looked at Virginia. Virginia was staring straight in front of her at
the avenue, at the afternoon sun lying along its emptiness.

‘I do think it good of your dear mother to bother about that young man,’
said Mrs. Colquhoun. ‘Let us hope she will teach him better manners. And
now,’ she added briskly, laying an affectionate arm round her
daughter-in-law’s shoulder, ‘isn’t it time our little Virginia put her
feet up?’




XX


Christopher’s was the slowest motor-cycle on the road that day. At times
it proceeded with the leisureliness of a station fly. They loitered
along in the sunshine, stopping at the least excuse--a view, an old
house, a flock of primroses. They had tea at Salisbury, and examined the
Cathedral, and talked gaily of <i>Jude the Obscure</i>, surely the most
unfortunate of men, and from him they naturally proceeded to discuss
death and disaster, and all very happily, for they were in the precisely
opposite mood of the one praised by the poet as sweet, and the sad
thoughts evoked by Sarum Close brought pleasant thoughts to their mind.

How much they had to say to each other. There was no end to their talk,
their eager exchange of opinions. Chickover was dim as a dream now in
Catherine’s mind; and the Catherine who had gone to bed there every
evening in a growing wretchedness was a dream within a dream. With
Christopher she was alive. He himself was so tremendously alive that one
would indeed have to be a hopeless mummy not to catch life from him and
wake up. Besides, it was impossible to be--anyhow for a short time--with
some one who adored one, unless he was physically repulsive, and not be
happy. That Christopher adored her was plain to the very passers-by. The
men who passed grinned to themselves in sympathy; the women sighed; and
old ladies, long done with envy, smiled with open benevolence between
their bonnet-strings.

Unconscious of everybody except each other, they walked about Salisbury
looking at the sights and not seeing them, so deeply were they engaged
in talk. What could be more innocent than to walk, talking, about
Salisbury? Yet if Stephen, Virginia, or Mrs. Colquhoun had met them they
would have been moved by unpleasant emotions. Once during the afternoon
this thought crossed Catherine’s mind. It was when, at tea in a
confectioner’s, Christopher was holding out a plate of muffins to her,
his face the face of a seraph floating in glory; and she took a muffin,
and held it suspended while she looked at him, arrested by the thought,
and said, ‘Why mayn’t one be happy?’

‘But one may, and one is,’ said Christopher.

‘One is,’ she smiled, ‘but one mayn’t. At least, one mayn’t go on being
happy. Not over again. Not in this way. Not----’ she tried to find the
words to express it--‘out of one’s turn.’

‘What one’s relations think, or wish, or approve, or deplore,’ said
Christopher, who scented Stephen somewhere at the back of her remarks,
‘should never be taken the least notice of if one wishes to go on
developing.’

‘Well, I seem to be going on developing at a breakneck rate.’

‘Besides, it’s jealousy. Nearly always. Deep down. The grudge of the
half dead against the wholly alive, of the not wanted against the
wanted. They can’t manage to be alive themselves, so they declare the
only respectable thing is to be dead. The only pure thing. The only holy
thing. And they pretend every sort of pious horror if one won’t be dead
too. Relations,’ he finished, lighting a cigarette and speaking from the
depths of an experience that consisted of one uncle, and he the most
amiable and unexacting of men, who never gave advice and never
criticised, and only wanted sometimes to be played golf with, ‘are like
that. They have to be defied. Or they’ll strangle one.’

‘It seems dangerous,’ said Catherine, pursuing her first thought, ‘to
show that one likes anything or anybody very much.’

‘Isn’t it the rankest hypocrisy,’ said Christopher with a face of
disgust.

‘If you were bald, and had a long white beard----’ she began. ‘But even
then,’ she went on after a pause, ‘if we looked pleased while we talked
and seemed very much interested, we’d be done for.’

She smiled. ‘They wouldn’t mind at all,’ she said, ‘if you were eating
muffins happily with a girl of your own age. It’s when somebody like me
comes along, who has had her turn, who is out of her turn.’

‘They would have people love by rule,’ said Christopher.

‘I don’t know about love, but they would have them be happy by rule,’
said Catherine.

‘They must be defied,’ said Christopher.

She laughed. ‘We <i>are</i> defying them,’ she said.

Proceeding from Salisbury with the setting sun behind them, they
continued with the same leisureliness in the direction of Andover and
London.

‘Oughtn’t we to go a little faster?’ Catherine asked, noticing the
lowness of the sun.

‘If you’re home by nine o’clock, won’t that be soon enough?’ he asked.

‘Oh, quite. I love this.’

‘I’d like to go on for ever,’ said Christopher.

‘Aren’t we friends,’ said Catherine, looking up at him with a smile.

‘<i>Aren’t</i> we,’ said Christopher, in deep contentment.

The chimney stacks of an old house on their right among trees attracted
her, and they turned off the main road to go and look at it. The house
was nothing specially beautiful, but the road that led to it was, and it
went winding on past the house through woods even more beautiful.

They followed it, for the main road was uninteresting, and this one,
though making a detour, would no doubt ultimately arrive at Andover.

Charming, this slow going along in the soft, purple evening. The smell
of the damp earth and grass in the woods they passed through was
delicious. It was dead quiet, and sometimes they stopped just to listen
to the silence.

Companionship: what a perfect thing it was, thought Catherine. To be two
instead of one, to be happily two, with no strain, no concealing or
pretending, quite natural, quite simple, quite relaxed--so natural and
simple and relaxed that it was really like being oneself doubled, but
oneself at one’s best, at one’s serenest and most amusing. Could any
condition be more absolutely delightful? And, thought Catherine, to be
two with some one of the opposite sex, some one strong who could take
care of one, with whom one felt safe and cosy, some one young, who liked
doing all the things the eternal child in oneself liked doing so much,
but never dared to for want of backing up, for fear of being laughed
at--how completely delightful.

They came, on the outer edge of the woods, to a group of cottages; a
little hamlet, solitary, tucked away from noise, the smoke of its
chimneys going straight up into the still air, so small that it hadn’t
even got a church--happy, happy hamlet, thought Catherine, remembering
her past week of church--and in one of the cottage gardens, sheltered
and warm, was the first flowering currant bush she had seen that year.

It stood splendid against the grey background of the shadowy garden,
brilliant pink and crimson in the dusk, and Christopher stopped at her
exclamation, and got off and went into the cottage and asked the old
woman who lived there to sell him a bunch of the flowers; and the old
woman, looking at him and Catherine, was sure from their faces of peace
that they were on their honeymoon, and picked a bunch and went to the
gate and gave it to Catherine, and wouldn’t take any money for it, and
said it was for luck.

It seemed quite natural, and in keeping with everything else that
afternoon, to find a nice old woman who gave them flowers and wished
them luck. In Salisbury people had all seemed extraordinarily amiable.
This old woman was extraordinarily amiable. She even called them pretty
dears, which filled their cup of enjoyment to the brim.

After this the country was very open, and solitary, and still. No signs
of any town were to be seen; only rolling hills, and here and there a
little group of trees. Also a few faint stars began to appear in the
pale sky.

‘Oughtn’t we to go faster?’ asked Catherine again, her lap full of the
crimson flowers.

‘We’ll make up between Andover and London,’ said Christopher. ‘If it’s
half-past nine instead of nine before we get to Hertford Street, will it
be early enough?’

‘Oh, quite,’ said Catherine placidly.

They jogged along, up and down the windings of the lane, which presently
grew grassier and narrower, into hollows and out of them again. Not a
house was to be seen, not a human being. Stillness, evening, stars. It
seemed to Catherine presently, in that wide place of rolling country and
great sky, that in the whole world there was nothing except herself,
Christopher, and the stars.

About seven miles beyond the hamlet of the flowering currant bush, just
at the top of an incline, the motor-cycle stopped.

She thought, waking from the dream she had fallen into, that he was
stopping it, as so often before that afternoon, to listen to the
silence; but he hadn’t stopped it, it had stopped itself.

‘Damn,’ said Christopher, pulling and pushing and kicking certain parts
of the thing.

‘Why?’ asked Catherine comfortably.

‘The engine’s stopped.’

‘Perhaps it wants winding up.’

He got off, and began to stoop and peer. She sat quiet, her head back,
her face upturned, gazing at the stars. It was most beautiful there in
the great quiet of the falling night. There was still a dull red line in
the sky where the sun had gone down, but from the east a dim curtain was
drawing slowly towards them. The road, just at the place they were,
curved southwards, and she had the red streak of the sunset on her right
and the advancing darkness on her left. They were on the top of a
rising in the vast flatness, and it was as if she could see to the ends
of the world. The quiet, now that the motor had stopped, was profound.

Christopher came and looked at her. She smiled at him. She was perfectly
content and happy.

He didn’t smile back. ‘The petrol’s run out,’ he said.

‘Has it?’ said Catherine placidly. In cars, when petrol ran out, one
opened another can of it and ran it in again.

‘There isn’t any more,’ said Christopher. ‘And from the look of this
place I should say we were ten miles from anywhere.’

He was overwhelmed. He had meant to have his tank filled up at
Salisbury, and in his enchanted condition of happiness had forgotten. Of
all the infernal, hopeless fools....

He could only stare at her.

‘Well, what are we going to do?’ she asked, waking up a little to the
seriousness of his face.

‘If we were near anywhere----’ he said, looking round.

‘Can’t we go back to those cottages?’

‘The thing won’t budge.’

‘Walk?’

‘At least seven miles.’

They stared at each other in the deepening dusk.

‘Well, but, Christopher----’

‘I know,’ he said. ‘We’re in a hell of a fix, and it’s entirely my
fault. I simply forgot to have her filled up at Salisbury.’

‘Well, but there must be some way out.’

‘Not unless some one happens to come along, and I could persuade him to
go to the nearest petrol place and fetch us some.’

‘Can’t you go?’

‘And leave you here?’

‘Can’t I go?’

‘As though you could!’

In silence they gazed at each other. The stars were growing brighter.
Their faces stood out now as something white in the darkening landscape.

‘Well, but, Christopher----’ began Catherine incredulously.

‘If I thought we could by walking get anywhere within reasonable time,
I’d leave the blighted machine here to its fate. But we might get lost,
and wander round for hours. And besides, where would we find a railway
station? Miles and miles we might have to go.’

‘That wouldn’t matter. I mean, however late we got to London wouldn’t
matter as long as we did get there.’

‘I quite see we’ve jolly well got to get there. What beats me is how.’

Catherine was silent. They were indeed, as Christopher said, in a fix.
She would even, mentally, agree with him that it was a hell of a one.

‘Catherine, I’m sorry,’ he said, laying his hand on hers.

The words but feebly represented his feelings. He was crushed by his
folly, by his idiotic forgetfulness in Salisbury. Would she ever trust
herself with him again? If she didn’t, he deserved all he got.

‘I was so happy in Salisbury,’ he said, ‘that I never thought about the
petrol. I’m the most hopeless blighter.’

‘But what are we to <i>do</i>?’ asked Catherine earnestly.

‘I’m hanged if I know,’ he said.

Again they stared at each other in silence. The night seemed to have
descended on them now with the suddenness of a huge swooping bird.

‘I suppose we had better leave it here and walk on,’ she said. ‘It seems
a dreadful thing to do, but there’s a chance perhaps of our meeting some
one or getting somewhere. Or couldn’t we push it? Is it very heavy?’

‘I could push it for two miles, perhaps, but that would be about the
limit.’

‘But I’d help.’

‘You!’

He smiled at her, miserable as he was.

‘We might strike the main road,’ he said, gazing across the dim space to
where--how many miles away?--it probably lay.

‘It can’t be very far, can it?’ she said. ‘And then perhaps a car
passing might help us.’

He struck a match and lit the lamps--their light comforted them a
little--and took out his map and studied it.

As he feared, this obscure and attractive cart-track was not to be found
on it, nor was the group of solitary cottages.

Far away to the north, in some distant trees, an owl hooted. It had the
effect of making them feel more lost than ever.

‘I think we’d better stay where we are,’ he said.

‘And hope some one may come along?’

‘Yes. We’ll have the lights on. They ought to be seen for miles round.
Somebody may wonder what they’re doing up here, not moving. There’s
just a chance. People are so damned incurious, though,’ he added.

‘Especially if being curious would mean walking up here in the dark.’

She tried to talk in her usual voice, but it was difficult, for she was
aghast at the misfortune that had overtaken them.

‘Perhaps if you shouted----?’ she suggested.

He shouted. It sounded awful. It emphasised the loneliness. It made her
shiver. And after each shout, out of the silence that succeeded it, the
owl away in the distant trees hooted. It was the only answer.

‘Let us wait quietly,’ she said, laying her hand on his arm. ‘Some one
is sure to see the lights, sooner or later.’

A little wind began to creep round them, a mere stirring, to begin with,
of the air, but it was a very cool little wind, not to say cold, and any
more of it would be decidedly unpleasant.

He looked round him again. The ground dropped on the left of the track
into one of the many hollows they had been down into and up out of since
leaving the cottages.

‘We’ll go and sit down there,’ he said. ‘It’ll be more sheltered, and we
shall hear all right if anybody comes along the road.’

She got on to her feet, and he helped her out, unwinding the rug as he
had done that morning--was it really only that morning?--in the sunny
cove by the sea.

‘What a day we’re having!’ said Catherine, trying to be gay; but never
did anybody feel less so.

He carried the rug and cushions across the grass and down the slope. He
had nothing he could say. He was overwhelmed by his folly. Of what use
throwing himself at her feet and begging her to forgive him? That
wouldn’t help them. Besides, she wasn’t angry with him, she couldn’t
forgive an offence she didn’t recognise. She was an angel. She was made
up of patience and sweet temper. And he had got her into this incredible
mess.

Silently Christopher chose, by one of the lamps he took off his machine,
a little hollow within the hollow, and spread the rug in it and arranged
the cushions. ‘It’s not much past eight,’ he said, looking at his
wrist-watch. ‘Quite early. With any luck----’

He broke off, and covered her up, as she sat on it, with the ends and
sides of the rug, for what did he mean by luck? If anybody were to come
across that plain and consent to go and fetch petrol, what hours before
it could be found and brought! Still, to get her back to Hertford Street
in the small hours of the night, even in the very smallest, would be
better than not getting her back till next day.

‘You stay here,’ he said, ‘and I’ll go up to that confounded machine
again, and do a bit more shouting.’

‘It sounds so gruesome,’ she said, with a shiver. ‘As if we were being
murdered.’

‘You won’t hear it so much down here.’

He went up the slope, and presently the forlorn sound echoed round
again. The night rang with it. It seemed impossible that the whole world
should not be startled into activity by such a noise.

When he was hoarse he came back to her, and sat listening with a cocked
ear for any sounds of approaching footsteps.

‘You’re not cold?’ he asked. ‘Oh, Catherine--forgive me.’

‘Quite warm,’ she answered smiling. ‘And I don’t mind this a bit, you
know. It really is--fun.’

He said no more. He who was so ready of tongue had nothing to say now.
In silence he sat beside her, listening.

‘I’m glad we ate all those muffins for tea,’ she said presently.

‘Are you hungry?’

‘Not yet. But I think I shall be soon, and so will you.’

‘And soon you’ll be cold, I’m afraid. Oh, Catherine----’

‘Well, I’m not cold yet,’ she interrupted him, smiling again, for what
was the good of poor Christopher reproaching himself?

Peering into her face, white in the darkness, he could see she was
smiling. He tucked the rug closer round her. He wanted to kiss her feet,
to adore her for being so cheerful and patient, but what was the good of
that? Nothing he did could convey what he thought of himself. There they
were; and it was getting cold.

He fancied he heard a sound on the track above, and leapt up the bank.

Silence up there. Silence, and the stars, and the lonely lights of his
deserted machine, and black down below, and all round emptiness.

He shouted again. His shout seemed to come back to him mournfully, from
great distances.

By this time it was half-past nine.

He stayed up there, shouting at intervals, for half an hour, till his
voice gave out. When he scrambled down again into the hollow, Catherine
was asleep.

He sat down carefully beside her. He didn’t dare light a cigarette for
fear the smell would wake her. It was better that she should sleep.

He sat cursing himself. Suppose she caught cold, suppose she was ill
from fatigue and exposure? Beyond this, and her natural, and he was
afraid inevitable, loss of trust in him, he saw no other danger for her.
These were bad enough, but he saw no others. Nobody would know about
this. None of her detestable relations would ever hear that she did not
after all get home till--when? How should they? It wouldn’t enter Mrs.
Mitcham’s head, or the porter’s, to mention it. Why on earth should
they? His mind was quiet as to that. But Catherine out there, in a damp
field, at night, perhaps for hours--Catherine who was so precious a
jewel in his eyes that he felt she ought never to be let out of the
softest, safest nest--Catherine brought there by him, marooned there by
his fault--these were the things that made him swear under his breath,
sitting beside her while she slept.

It got colder, much colder. A mist gathered below them, and crawled
about among the hillocks. No wind could reach them in their hollow, but
a mist, he knew, is a nasty clammy thing to have edging up over one’s
boots.

Perhaps it wouldn’t come so high. He watched it anxiously. He was in
despair. They could get warm, he knew, by walking, and he himself would
get more than warm pushing his machine, but he couldn’t push it for
anything like two miles, as he had told her, on that rough track, and
when he was obliged to stop from exhaustion they would both very soon be
colder than ever. Besides, imagine Catherine, with her little feet,
slithering and stumbling about in the mud and the dark! And anyhow
they’d get nowhere now there was that mist. Better stick where they
were. At least they were sheltered from wind. But it was fantastic to
think, as he was beginning to be forced to think, that they might have
to stay there till daylight.

He sat with his hands gripped round his knees, and stared at the stars.
How hard and cold they looked. What did they care? Cruel brutes. He
wondered why he had ever admired them.

Catherine moved, and he turned to her quickly, and gently tucked the
loosened rug round her again.

This woke her, and she opened her eyes and looked for a moment in silent
astonishment at his head, dark and shadowy, with stars behind it in a
black sky, bending over her.

It seemed to be Christopher’s, but why?

Then she remembered. ‘Oh,’ she said faintly, ‘we’re still here....’

She tried not to shiver, but she was very cold, and what is one rug and
damp grass to lie on to a person used at that time of night to a bed and
blankets? Also, her surface was small, and she got cold more quickly
than bigger people.

He saw her shiver, and without asking leave, or wasting time in phrases,
moved close up to her and took her in his arms.

‘This is nothing to do with anything, Catherine,’ he explained, as she
made a movement of resistance, ‘except a determination not to let you
die of cold. Besides, it will keep me warm too--which I daresay I
wouldn’t be, towards the small hours of the morning, if I kept myself to
myself.’

‘The morning?’ she echoed in a very small voice. ‘Are we--do you think
we shall be here all night?’

‘It looks like it,’ he said.

‘Oh, Christopher----’

‘I know.’

She said no more, and he held her and her coat and the rug tightly in
his arms. As a mother holds her babe, so did Christopher hold Catherine,
and with much the same sort of passionate protective tenderness. One arm
was beneath her shoulders, so that her head rested on his breast, the
other was round her body, keeping her coverings close round her. His own
head was on the cushion from the side-car, and his cheek leaned against
her soft motoring cap.

Like this they lay in silence, and what Catherine felt was, first,
amazement that she should be there, on an unknown hillside in a lonely
country at night with Christopher, forced by circumstances to get as
close to him as possible; and secondly, as she became warmer and
drowsier, and nature accordingly prevailed over convention, a queer
satisfaction and peace. And what Christopher felt, as he lay leaning his
cheek against her head and gazing up at the stars, was that he had never
seen anything more beautiful than the way those blessed stars seemed to
understand--twinkling and flashing down at them as if they were laughing
for joy at the amount of happiness that was flung about the world. His
precious little love--his precious, precious little love....

‘Of course--you know--’ murmured Catherine, on the verge of sleep, ‘this
is only--a kind of--precautionary measure----’

‘Quite,’ whispered Christopher, holding the rug closer round her.

But sleep is a great loosener of the moral sense. How is one to know
right from wrong if one is asleep? How can one, in that state, be
expected to be responsible? Catherine slept, and Christopher kissed her.
Dimly through her dreams she knew she was being kissed, but it was so
gentle a kissing, so tender, it made her feel so safe ... and up there
there was no one to mind, no one to criticise ... and yesterday was
infinitely far away ... and to-morrow might never come....

She was not so much asleep that she did not know she was happy; she was
too much asleep to feel she ought to stop him.




XXI


Mrs. Mitcham, not expecting her mistress back till Monday, went on that
Saturday to visit a friend in Camden Town, and when she came back soon
after nine was surprised to find Miss Virginia’s husband on the mat
outside the door of the flat ringing the bell. He, of all people, should
know her mistress wasn’t there, thought Mrs. Mitcham, seeing that it was
in Miss Virginia’s house she was staying.

The carpet on the stairs was thick, and Mrs. Mitcham arrived at
Stephen’s side unnoticed. He was absorbed in ringing. He rang and rang.

‘I beg your pardon, sir,’ said Mrs. Mitcham respectfully.

He turned quickly. ‘Where is your mistress?’ he inquired.

‘My mistress, sir?’ said Mrs. Mitcham, much surprised. ‘I understood she
was coming back on Monday, sir.’

‘She left the Manor this afternoon on her way home. She ought to have
been here long ago. Have you had no telegram announcing her arrival?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Well, I have,’ he said, looking quite upset, Mrs. Mitcham noticed, and
pulling a telegram out of his overcoat pocket. ‘My wife telegraphed her
mother had started, and asked me to see if she got here safely.’

‘Safely, sir?’ echoed Mrs. Mitcham, surprised at the word.

‘Mrs. Cumfrit was--motoring up. As you know, my wife should not be
worried and made anxious just now,’ said Stephen frowning. ‘It is most
undesirable--most undesirable.’

‘Yes, sir,’ said Mrs. Mitcham. ‘But I’m sure there is no cause. Mrs.
Cumfrit will be here presently. It’s not more than nine o’clock, sir.’

‘She left at half-past two.’

‘Allowing for punctures, sir----’ suggested Mrs. Mitcham respectfully.
‘Will you come in, sir?’ she added, unlocking the door and holding it
open for him.

‘Yes--and wait,’ said Stephen in a determined voice.

He went straight into the drawing-room without taking off his overcoat.
That Miss Virginia’s husband was upset was plain to Mrs. Mitcham. He
hardly seemed like the same gentleman who had on his last visit so
nicely called her and her mistress little children and told them to love
one another. She was quite glad to get away from him into her calm
kitchen.

Stephen was very much upset. He had received Virginia’s telegram at six
o’clock, just as he was quietly sitting in his hotel bedroom going over
his sermons and giving them the last important touches. These were
valuable hours, these afternoon and evening hours of the Saturdays
before he preached, and to be taken away from them for any reason was
most annoying. To be taken away from them for this one was more than
annoying, it was gravely disturbing. Again that side-car; again that
young man; as if a whole morning in it and with him were not
sufficiently deplorable. No wonder his poor little darling at home was
anxious. She said so in the telegram. It ran: <i>Mother left for Hertford
Street in Mr. Monckton’s side-car 2.30. Do see if arrived safely.
Anxious.</i>

Two-thirty; and it was then six. He went round at once. He didn’t know
much about motor-cycles, but at the pace he had seen them going he
judged that Monckton, not less swift than his confrères in upsetting the
peace of God’s countryside, would have had time to get to London.

No one, however, was in the flat, not even Mrs. Mitcham, who was bound
to it by duty. He rang in vain. As he went away he inquired of the hall
porter why no one was there, and learned that Mrs. Mitcham had gone out
at three o’clock and had not yet returned, and that Mrs. Cumfrit had
been away for the last week in the country,--which he already only too
well knew.

At half-past seven he called again--his sermons would suffer, he was
painfully aware--but with the same result. It was dark then, and he too
began to feel anxious; not on his mother-in-law’s account, for whatever
happened to her would be entirely her own fault, but on Virginia’s. She
would be in a terrible state if she knew her mother had not reached home
yet. That Mrs. Mitcham should still be absent from her duties he
regarded as not only reprehensible and another proof of Mrs. Cumfrit’s
laxness, but as a sign that she was unaware of her mistress’s impending
return, which was strange.

Immediately after dinner--a bad one, but if it had been good he could
not have appreciated it in his then condition of mind--he went back to
Hertford Street, and unable to believe, in spite of the hall porter’s
assurances, that the flat was still empty, rang and rang, and was found
by Mrs. Mitcham ringing. His mother-in-law must be there by now. She was
inside. He felt she was inside, and had gone to bed tired.

But directly he got in he knew she was not. There was a chill, a silence
about the flat, such as only places abandoned by their inhabitants have.
The drawing-room was as cold and tidy as a corpse. He kept his coat on.
The idea of taking it off in such bleakness would not have occurred to
him. He would have liked to keep his hat on too, for he had gone bald
early, but the teaching of his youth on the subject of ladies’
drawing-rooms and what to do in them prevented him.

Mrs. Mitcham, coming in to light the fire, found him staring out of the
window in the dark. The room was only lit by the shining in of the
street lamps. She was quite sorry for him. She had not supposed him so
much attached to Mrs. Cumfrit. Mrs. Mitcham was herself feeling rather
worried by now, and as she made Catherine’s bed and got her room ready
she had only kept cheerful by recollecting that a car had four tyres,
all of which might puncture, besides innumerable other parts, no doubt
equally able to have things the matter with them.

‘I’ll light the fire, if you please, sir,’ she said.

‘Not for me,’ said Stephen, without moving.

She lit it nevertheless, and also turned on the light by the sofa. She
didn’t like to draw the curtains, because he continued to stand at the
window staring into the street. Watching, thought Mrs. Mitcham; watching
anxiously. She was quite touched.

‘Is there anything you would like, sir?’ she inquired.

‘Nothing,’ said Stephen, his gaze riveted on the street.

Throughout that dreadful night Stephen watched at the window, and Mrs.
Mitcham came in at intervals to see what she could do for him. She made
coffee at eleven o’clock, and brought it to him, and fetched it away
again at midnight cold and untouched. She carried in an armful of
blankets at one o’clock, and arranged a bed for him on the sofa, into
which he did not go. At five she brought him tea, which he did not
drink. At eight she began to get breakfast ready. Throughout the night
he stood at the window, or walked up and down the room, and each time
she saw him he seemed to have grown thinner. Certainly his face looked
sharper than it had the night before. Mrs. Mitcham could not but be
infected by such agitation, though being naturally optimistic she felt
somehow that her mistress was delayed rather than hurt. Still, it was
impossible to see a gentleman like Mr. Colquhoun, a gentleman of great
learning, she had heard, who must know everything about everything and
had preached in St. Paul’s Cathedral,--it was impossible to see such a
gentleman grow thinner with anxiety before one’s eyes without becoming,
in spite of one’s secret faith, anxious too. And the hard fact that her
mistress’s bed had not been slept in stared her in the face.

‘I must wash,’ said Stephen hoarsely, when she told him breakfast was
ready and would do him good.

She conducted him to the bathroom.

‘I must shave,’ he said, looking at her with hollow eyes. ‘I have to
preach this morning. I must go back to my hotel and shave.’

‘Oh no, sir,’ said Mrs. Mitcham; and brought him George’s razors--a
little blunt, but yet razors.

He stared at them. His eyes seemed to become more hollow.

‘Razors?’ he said. ‘Here?’

That there should be razors in the apartment of a widow----

‘The late Mr. Cumfrit’s, sir,’ said Mrs. Mitcham.

Of course. Really his control was gone; he was no longer apparently able
to keep his thoughts from plunging into the most incredible places.

He stropped the razors, thinking of the probable last time they had been
stropped by his father-in-law before being folded away by him who would
never strop again, and shaved in front of the glass in the bathroom
before which the excellent man must so often have stood. <i>Pulvis et
umbra sumum</i>, said Stephen to himself in his profound dejection,
forgetting for a moment the glorious resurrection he so carefully
believed in. At what point did one, he wondered, his mind returning to
his troubles,--at what point did one, in the circumstances in which he
found himself, inform the police?

He forced himself to eat some breakfast for fear he might otherwise
collapse in the pulpit, and he drank a cup of strong coffee with the
same idea of being kept up. The thought that it was his own
mother-in-law who had brought all this trouble on him had a peculiar
sting. Quite evidently there had been an accident, and God knew how he
would get through his sermon, with the fear crushing him of the effect
such terrible news would have on the beloved mother of his child to be.
There was no blessing, he told himself, outside the single straight path
of one’s duty. If his mother-in-law had continued in that path as she
used to continue in it, instead of suddenly taking to giving way to
every impulse--that she should still have impulses was in itself
indecent--this misery for Virginia, and accordingly for himself, would
have been avoided. To go rushing about the country with a young
man,--why, how scandalous at her age. And the punishment for this, the
accident that had so evidently happened, fell most heavily, as
punishments so mysteriously often did--only one must not question God’s
wisdom--on the innocent. What living thing in the whole world could be
more innocent than his wife? Except the child; except the little soul of
love she bore about with her beneath her heart; and that too would
suffer through her suffering.

Stephen prayed. He couldn’t bear the thought of what Virginia was going
to suffer. He bowed his head on his arms and prayed. Mrs. Mitcham found
him like this when she came to clear away the breakfast. She was deeply
sorry for him; he seemed to have been so much more attached to her
mistress than one would have ever guessed.

‘You’ll feel better, sir,’ she consoled him, ‘when your breakfast has
had more time.’ And she ventured to ask, ‘Was it Miss Virginia’s car
bringing Mrs. Cumfrit up? I beg pardon, sir--I mean, your car? Because
if so, I’ll be bound she’ll be safe with Smithers.’

Stephen shook his head. He could bear no questions. He could not go into
the story of the motor-cycle with Mrs. Mitcham. He felt ill after his
night walking about the drawing-room; his head seemed to be bursting. He
got up and left the room.

He had to go to the hotel on his way to St. Jude’s to fetch his sermon.
He waited till the last possible minute, still hoping that some news
might come; and then, when he dared wait no longer, and Mrs. Mitcham
was helping him into his coat, he told her he would come back
immediately after morning service and consider what steps should be
taken as to informing the police.

‘The police?’ repeated Mrs. Mitcham, much shocked. The police and her
mistress. Out of her heart disappeared the last ray of optimism.

‘We must somehow find out what has happened,’ said Stephen sharply.

‘Yes, sir,’ said Mrs. Mitcham, opening the door for him.

The police and her mistress. She had a feeling that the mere putting the
police on to search would make them find something dreadful,--that if
nothing had happened, the moment they began to look something would have
happened.

Feeling profoundly conscious of being only a weak woman in a world full
of headstrong men, she opened the door for Stephen, and he, going
through it without further speech, met Catherine coming out of the
lift,--Catherine perfectly sound and unharmed,--and with her was
Christopher.

They all three stopped dead.

‘You, Stephen?’ said Catherine after a moment, very faintly. ‘Why,
how----?’

‘I have,’ said Stephen, ‘been waiting all night. Waiting and watching
for you.’

‘I--we--broke down.’

He made a sign to the lift boy that he was coming down with him.

‘Enough--enough,’ he said, with a queer gesture of pushing her and
everything connected with her out of his sight; and hurried into the
lift and disappeared.

Catherine and Christopher looked at each other.




XXII


That was an awful day for Stephen.

Men have found out, with terrible pangs, that their wives, whom they
regarded as models of blamelessness, were secretly betraying their homes
and families, but Stephen could not recall any instance of a man’s
finding this out about his wife’s mother. It was not, he supposed, quite
so personally awful as if it were one’s wife, but on the other hand it
had a peculiar awfulness of its own. A young woman might descend
declivities, impelled by the sheer momentum of youth; but for women of
riper years, for the matrons, for the dowagers, for those whose calm
remaining business in life is to hold aloft the lantern of example,
whose pride it should be to be quiet, to be immobile, to be looked-up to
and venerated,--for these to indulge in conduct that disgraced their
families and ruined themselves was, in a way, even more horrible. In any
woman of riper years it was horrible and terrible. In this one,--what it
was in this one was hardly to be uttered, for she--ah, ten times
horrible and terrible--was his own mother-in-law.

He preached his sermon mechanically, with no sense of what he was
reading, never lifting his eyes from his manuscript. The dilapidated
pair--they had looked extraordinarily dilapidated as they stood there,
guilty and caught, in the unsparing light of Sunday morning--floated
constantly before him, and made it impossible for him to attend to a
word he was saying.

What was he to do next? How could he ever face Virginia, and answer her
anxious, loving questions about her mother’s safety? It must be kept
from her, the appalling, the simply unutterable truth; at all costs it
must be kept from her in her present condition, or it well might kill
her. He felt he must tell his mother, for he could not bear this burden
alone, but no one else must ever know what he knew. It would be the
first secret between him and Virginia, and what a secret!

His thoughts whirled this way and that, anywhere but where he was, while
his lips read out what he had written in those days last week of
innocent peace, that now seemed so far away, about Love. Love! What
sins, thought Stephen, were committed in its name. Incredible as it was,
almost impossible to imagine at their different ages, and shocking to
every feeling of decency and propriety, the word had probably frequented
the conversations of those two.

He shuddered away. There were some things one simply could not think of.
And yet he did think of them; they haunted him. ‘We broke down,’ she had
said. Persons in her position always said that. He was man of the world
enough to know what that meant. And then their faces,--their startled,
guilty faces, when they found him so unexpectedly confronting them.

‘<i>Love</i>,’ read out Stephen from his manuscript, quoting part of his text
and with mechanically uplifted hand and emphasis impressing it on his
congregation, ‘<i>thinketh no evil</i>....’

After the service he went straight back to Hertford Street. Useless to
flinch from his duty. His first impulse that morning, and he had
followed it, was to remove himself at once from contact with his
mother-in-law. But he was a priest; he was her nearest living male
relative; he was bound to do something.

He went straight back to Hertford Street, and found her sitting in the
dining-room quietly eating mutton.

It had always seemed grievous to Stephen, and deeply to be regretted,
that no traces of sin should be physically visible on the persons of the
sinners, that a little washing and tidying should be enough to make them
indistinguishable from those who had not sinned. Here was this one,
looking much the same as usual, very like any other respectable quiet
lady at her Sunday luncheon, eating mutton as though nothing had
happened. At such a crisis, he felt, at such an overwhelming moment of
all their lives, of his, of hers, of his dear love’s, whitely
unconscious at home, whatever his mother-in-law did it ought anyhow not
to have been that.

She looked up when he came in, walking in unannounced, putting Mrs.
Mitcham aside when she tried to open the door for him.

‘I’m glad you’ve come back, Stephen,’ she said, leaning forward and
pushing out the chair on her right hand for him to sit on--as though he
would dream of sitting!--‘I want to tell you what happened.’

He took no notice of the chair, and stood facing her at the end of the
table, leaning on it with both hands, their thin knuckles white with his
heavy pressure.

‘Won’t you sit down?’ she said.

‘No.’

‘Have you had lunch?’

‘No.’

‘Will you have some?’

‘No.’

There was nothing for it, Catherine knew, but to face whatever music
Stephen should make, but she did think he might have said ‘No, thank
you.’ Still, her position was very weak, so she accepted his
monosyllables without comment. Besides--poor Stephen--he did look
wretchedly upset; he must have had a dreadful night.

She was very sorry for him, and began to tell him what had happened, how
the petrol had run out just when they were in that bare stretch of
country between Salisbury and Andover----

Stephen raised his hand. ‘Spare me all this,’ he said. ‘Spare me and
yourself.’

‘There’s nothing to spare,’ said Catherine. ‘I assure you I don’t mind
telling you what happened.’

‘You should <i>blush</i>,’ said Stephen, leaning forward on his knuckles.
‘You should <i>blush</i>.’

‘Blush?’ she repeated.

‘Do you not know that you are fatally compromised?’

‘My dear Stephen----’

He longed to forbid her to call him by that name.

‘Fatally,’ he said.

‘My dear Stephen, don’t be ridiculous. I know it was most unfortunate
that I shouldn’t get back till this morning----’

‘Unfortunate!’

‘But who will ever hear about it? And I couldn’t help it. You don’t
suppose I <i>liked</i> it?’

Then, as she said the words, the remembrance of herself being kept warm
in Christopher’s arms, and of him softly kissing her eyes, came back to
her. Yes; she had liked that. Yes; she knew she had liked that, and been
happy.

A deep red flooded her face even as she said the words, and she lowered
her eyes.

Stephen saw; and any faint hope he had had that her story might be true
went out. His soul seemed to drop into a pit of blackness. She was
guilty. She had done something unthinkable. Virginia’s mother. It was
horror to be in the same room with her.

‘This thing,’ he said in a low voice, his eyes wide open and blazing, as
though he indeed beheld horror, ‘must be made good somehow. There is
only one way. It is a shame, a shame to have to utter it in connection
with a boy of his age and a woman of yours, but the only thing left for
you to do is to marry him.’

‘Marry him?’

She stared at him, her mouth open in her amazement.

‘Nothing else will save you, either from man’s condemnation or God’s
punishment.’

‘Stephen,’ she said, ‘are you mad?’--that <i>he</i> should be urging her to
marry Christopher!--‘Why should I do anything of the sort?’

‘Why? You ask me why? Am I to suffer the uttermost shame, and be forced
to put into words what you have done?’

‘You are certainly mad, Stephen,’ said Catherine, trying to keep her
head up, but terribly handicapped, she being of so blameless a life that
the least speck on it was conspicuous and looked to her enormous, by the
memory of those dimly felt kisses.

If only she had trudged all night in the mud, trudged on, however much
exhausted she had been, she could have faced Stephen with the proper
indignation of virtue unjustly suspected; but there were those hours
asleep, folded warm in Christopher’s arms, and through her sleep the
consciousness of his kisses. She would probably have been very ill if
she had trudged all night, but she could have held up her head and
ordered Stephen out of her presence. As it was, her head wouldn’t hold
up, and Stephen was as certain as if he had seen the pair in some hotel
that there had been no breakdown, and his mother-in-law was lying.

Hideous, he thought; too hideous. So hideous that one couldn’t even pray
about it, for to speak about such matters to God....

‘I have nothing more to say,’ he said slowly, his face as cold and hard
as frozen rock, ‘except that unless you marry him you will never be
allowed to see my wife again. But the <i>disgrace</i> of such a marriage--the
<i>disgrace</i>----’

She stared at him, pale now.

‘But Stephen----’ she began.

She stared at him, across the absurd mutton, the mutton he had felt was
so incongruous, gone cold and congealed on its dish. This silliness,
this madness, this determination to insist on sin! She might have
laughed if she had not been so angry; she might have laughed, too, if it
had not been for the awkward, the mortifying memory of those kisses; she
might, even so, have laughed, if he had not had the power to cut her off
from Virginia. But he had the power,--he, the stranger she had let in to
her gates when she could so easily have been ungenerous and shut him
out. Why, it wouldn’t even have been ungenerous, but merely prudent.
Three years more of freedom she would have gained, of freedom from him
and possession of her child, by just saying one word. And she hadn’t
said it. She had let him in. And here he was with power to destroy her.

She looked at him, very pale. ‘It’s at least a mercy, then,’ she said,
her eyes full of bright tears of indignation at the injustice, the
cruelty of the man she had made so happy, ‘that I love Christopher.’

‘You love him!’ repeated Stephen, appalled by the shamelessness of such
a confession.

‘Yes,’ said Catherine. ‘I love him very much. He loves me so much, and I
find it impossible--I find it impossible----’

Her voice faltered, but with a great effort she got it steady again, and
went on, ‘I find it impossible not to love people who are good, if they
love me.’

‘You dare,’ said Stephen, ‘to mention love? You dare to use that word in
connection with this boy and yourself?’

‘But would you have me marry him and not love him?’

‘It is shameful,’ said Stephen, beside himself at what seemed to him her
ghastly effrontery, ‘that some one so much older should even think of
love in connection with some one so much younger.’

‘But what, then,’ said Catherine, ‘about you and Virginia?’

It was the first time she had ever alluded to it. The instant she had
said it she was sorry. Always she had rather be hurt than hurt, rather
be insulted than insult.

He looked at her a moment, his thin face white with this last outrage.
Then he turned, and went away without a word.




XXIII


She spent the afternoon walking up and down the drawing-room, even as
Stephen had spent the night walking up and down it.

She was trying to arrange her thoughts, so that she could see a little
more clearly through the tangle they were in, but as they were not so
much thoughts as feelings, and all of them agitated and all of them
contradictory, it was difficult.

What had happened to her was from every point of view most unpleasant.
Sometimes she cried, and sometimes she stopped dead in the middle of the
room, smitten by a horrid sensation of sickness when she thought of
Virginia. Stephen would be as good as his word, she knew, and cut her
off from Virginia, and how could he cut her off from Virginia without
explaining the reason for it, his reason for it? The alternative was to
marry Christopher. But what would Virginia think of <i>that</i>? And if she
did marry him--how incredible that she should find herself being forced
by Stephen, of all people, even to consider it--it would prove to
Stephen that he had been right, and that she had been guilty.

Guilty! She went scarlet with anger and humiliation at the word. She, at
her age; she, with her record of unvaryingly correct wifehood and
motherhood and widowhood, her single-minded concentration of devotion,
first on George and then on Virginia. Years and years of it there had
been, years and years of complete blamelessness. One would have
supposed, she said to herself, clenching her hands, that it ought to be
possible, after a lifetime of crystal-clear propriety, for a woman to be
in a motor break-down at night without instantly being suspected of
wickedness. Only clergymen, only thoroughly good clergymen, could have
such thoughts....

Oh, she would write at once to Virginia. She would tell her what had
happened. But how shameful to have to defend herself to her daughter
against such an accusation. And never again, of course, never, never
again could things be the same between them, because how could they be,
after all that Stephen had said?

Up and down the room walked Catherine. It was intolerable she told
herself; the whole situation was intolerable. She wouldn’t endure it.
She would go away to the ends of the earth,--away, away, and never come
back to a country inhabited by Stephen. She would turn her back on
everybody, shake their horrid dust from her feet, settle somewhere in
Africa or Australia, give herself up to forgetting....

And hardly had she declared this than she was declaring that she
wouldn’t. No, she wouldn’t be driven out of her own country by Stephen
and his base mind. She would stay and brave him out. She would tell
everybody what had happened,--not only Virginia, but Mrs. Colquhoun, and
all her friends both in London and at Chickover, and she would tell them
the sequel too, and what her clergyman son-in-law demanded of her as the
price she was to pay for being readmitted into the ranks of honest
women,--she would make him ridiculous, turn the laugh against him....

And hardly had she declared this than she was declaring that she
wouldn’t. No, she wouldn’t be bitter, she wouldn’t make Stephen
ridiculous, of course she would do nothing of the kind. How could she so
desperately hurt Virginia? But she would write to Virginia, and describe
the night’s misfortunes, and as tactfully as possible explain how
Stephen, in his anxiety, took an extreme view of what people might say
of her adventure, but that she was sure when he had had time to think it
over he would see that he was unnecessarily alarmed, and that nobody
would say anything.

She would restrict herself to this. She couldn’t, to Virginia, bring
herself to mention Stephen’s command that she should marry Christopher.
Marry Christopher! She threw back her head and laughed out loud,
standing alone among George’s frowning furniture, and went on laughing
till she found she wasn’t laughing at all, but crying; for there were
certainly tears rolling down her cheeks, and they were certainly not
tears of amusement. So then she wiped her face and began to walk up and
down again.

But struggle through the tangle of her mind as she might, Catherine
could see no real daylight. Always beneath her anger, her indignation at
Stephen’s odious instant jumping to the worst conclusions--‘And he a
priest of God,’ she said to herself, rolling her damp handkerchief into
a ball--was that memory of kisses on her closed eyelids. What things one
did in the dark! How differently one behaved. The memory of these kisses
pulverised her morale, made the bones of her pride go to water within
her. If only, only she had insisted on walking on. But it had seemed so
natural to sit down, especially when there was nowhere to walk to. And
once she had sat down, the rest had followed in the simplest sequence.

At intervals of half an hour the telephone bell rang, and Mrs. Mitcham
came in and said Mr. Monckton was at the telephone.

‘Tell him I’m asleep,’ said Catherine each time, turning her face away
so that Mrs. Mitcham should not see she had been crying.

At five o’clock Mrs. Mitcham came to say that Mr. Monckton was asking
when he might come round.

‘Tell him I’m still asleep,’ said Catherine, looking out of the window.

Christopher. What was she going to do about him? She could say she was
asleep that afternoon, but she couldn’t be asleep for ever; sooner or
later she would have to see him. That morning, after the dreadful
encounter with Stephen on the door-mat, she had sent Christopher away at
once. Overwhelmed by the shocking bad fortune of running straight into
Stephen, by the shocking bad fortune of having Christopher with her, who
had carried up her things for her when it wasn’t in the least necessary,
only one doesn’t think, one says yes without thinking,--naturally one
does, for one can’t suspect life of going to hit one at every twist and
turn--she had told him to go away, had almost pushed him away, as if,
now that the mischief was done, his going or staying mattered any more.

But what was she going to do about him? Was she strong enough to defy
Stephen and go on seeing Christopher just as before, without marrying
him? And Virginia? Whatever she did in regard to Stephen included
Virginia; if she defied one she defied and cut herself off from the
other. How could she let go of Virginia, her only flesh and blood, her
one baby, so tenderly loved and cared for? How could she bear to know
that Virginia would believe she had done something abominable? It was a
nightmare ... she didn’t know how to shake herself free ... all because
of Stephen....

Seeing nothing, because she was blind with tears, she stood at the
window that looked out into the grey and gloomy street. To think that
this had happened just as she had got her relationship with Christopher
on to a clear and comfortable footing, freed him from all the nonsense
in his mind! Oh, well--last night--it was true there was last night--but
that didn’t count, that was an accident, that was because it was so cold
and dark, and anyhow she wasn’t awake,--no, that didn’t count. She <i>had</i>
freed his mind, she <i>had</i> cleared him up, and here comes Stephen, and
with his awful points of view, his terrible saintly suspiciousness,
smashes the whole of her friendship to bits. And however much she might
have wished to marry Christopher--she never, never would have wished to,
but <i>supposing</i> she had--she couldn’t do it now, because it would be an
admission that she must.

She leant her forehead against the cold window-pane. The houses opposite
stared across from out of their blank, curtained faces. It was raining,
and the street looked a grimy, sooty place, chill and lonely on that wet
Sunday afternoon, indifferent and hard. What did one do when one was in
trouble and had no one to go to? What did one <i>do</i>?

‘Mr. Monckton, m’m,’ said Mrs. Mitcham, opening the door.

‘However often he telephones,’ said Catherine in a smothered voice, her
face carefully turned to the street, ‘tell him I’m still a--asleep.’

The door shut, and there was silence in the room behind her.

Then some one came across it,--she supposed Mrs. Mitcham, going to make
up the fire, and she resented the impossibility, when one was unhappy,
of getting away from the perpetual interruptions of routine. Fires to be
made up, meals to sit down to and pretend to eat, clothes to be put on
and taken off,--how could one be thoroughly unhappy, get to grips with
one’s wretchedness, have it out, if one were always being interrupted?

Then she suddenly knew it wasn’t Mrs. Mitcham, it was Christopher.

She turned round quickly to send him away, but found him so close behind
her that by merely turning she tumbled up against him.

Instantly his arms were round her, and instantly she had the feeling she
had had the night before, when going to sleep, of comfort, and warmth
and safety.

‘You mustn’t----’ she tried to protest; but he held her tight, and even
while she said he mustn’t she knew he must, and she must.

‘Oh, Chris,’ she whispered, her cheek pressed against his coat, ‘I’m so
<i>ashamed</i>--so <i>ashamed</i>----’

‘What of?’ asked Christopher, holding her so tight that even if she had
wanted to she couldn’t have got away. But she didn’t want to.

‘Stephen has been here, saying the most awful things----’

‘Has he, by Jove,’ said Christopher, his head on hers, one hand softly
stroking her face. ‘He’s a very good chap, though,’ he added.

‘What? Stephen? Why, you know he isn’t.’

‘But he is. He came to see me too, this afternoon.’

‘<i>Oh.</i>’

‘And I think he’s a thorough sensible chap.’

‘Why, what did he--what did he----?’

‘Narrow, of course, and an infernal ass in places, as I told him several
times in the clearest language, besides being a disgusting swine with a
regrettably foul mind----’

‘Oh, then did he--did he----?’

‘But as good and sensible really, within his limits, as any one I’d wish
to speak to.’

‘Oh, Chris--then he----?’

‘Yes. And we’re going to.’




PART II




I


Between the end of March, when these things happened, and the end of
April, when Catherine married Christopher, all taxi-drivers,
bus-conductors and railway-porters called her Miss.

Such was the effect Christopher had on her. Except for him, she
reflected, they probably would have addressed her as Mother, for except
for him she would have been profoundly miserable at this time, in the
deep disgrace and pain of being cut off from Virginia, from whom her
letters came back unopened, re-addressed by Stephen; and there was
nothing like inward misery, she knew, for turning women into apparent
mothers, old mothers, just as there was nothing like inward happiness
for turning them into apparent misses, young misses. She had this inward
happiness, for she had Christopher to love her, to comfort her, to feed
her with sweet names; and she flowered in his warmth into a beauty she
had never possessed in the tepid days of George. Obviously what the
world needed was love. She couldn’t help thinking this when she caught
sight of her own changed face in the glass.

Her friends, seeing her, marvelled at the wonderful effect the visit to
Chickover had had. They had feared this visit for her, feared its
inevitable painful awkwardness; and here she was back again, looking so
much younger and happier that they could scarcely believe their eyes.

Headed by the Fanshawes, they decided that so attractive a little thing,
whose only child was now married and out of the way, should no longer be
allowed to waste in widowhood, and that a suitable husband with plenty
of money must be found for her as quickly as possible. A series of
dinners, beginning at the Fanshawes, was arranged, at each of which
Catherine was to meet, one after the other, some good fellow with plenty
of money. But these plans were all frustrated; first by the fact that
most good fellows with plenty of money had wives already, and if they
hadn’t they had something just as bad, such as extreme old age,
broken-down health, or confirmed ferocious bachelorhood; and secondly,
by the fact that Catherine wouldn’t come.

She wouldn’t come. She wouldn’t at last come to anything, not even to
the telephone, and was never to be found at home. In those days, in the
middle of April, her friends sought her in vain, for she was absorbed
altogether in Christopher and the arrangements for their marrying. The
arrangements were simple enough, seeing that Christopher would merely
leave his rooms and come and live in her flat. Mrs. Mitcham would sleep
out, and her room be his dressing-room. Between them, Catherine and
Christopher would have fourteen hundred a year and no rent to pay. It
was enough. He would, of course, earn more later on, and end, he assured
her, by making her quite rich; at which she smiled, for she cared
nothing for that. The arrangements were in themselves quite simple, but
she had to hide them from her friends. She was terribly afraid they
might find out, and add their surprise to her own surprise at what fate
seemed to be hurling her into.

For no one could be more surprised than Catherine. She had tried, she
had kept on trying, to keep only to an affectionate friendship with
Christopher, but wasn’t able at last to stand up against him. He was so
young and strong and determined. He never got tired. Her arguments were
as nothing compared to his. He brushed her counsels of prudence, of
wisdom aside. He merely was very angry when she gave their ages as a
reason, the reason, why they shouldn’t marry; and when she gave
Stephen’s command that they should as a reason why they simply couldn’t,
not for very pride they couldn’t, he looked at her with the calm pity of
one who watches a child hurting itself to spite its elders.

At night she lay awake and told herself she couldn’t possibly do this
thing, harm him so profoundly, handicap his whole future. Seeing that he
was so reckless, it behoved her to be wise and sane for them both. What
would she look like in ten years, and what would he look like coming
into a room with her? How plainly she saw at night that whatever she did
she ought not to marry Christopher, and how what she saw vanished like
shadows fleeing before the morning light when he came back to her next
day. He had all the fearless hopefulness, the fresh resolves of morning.
He swept her away with him into a region where nobody cared for
prudence, and wisdom was thrown to the winds. Not so had George loved
her; not so had any one, she began to believe, ever been loved before.
Christopher loved her with the passion of youth, of imagination, of
poetry, of all the fresh beginnings of wonder and worship that have
been since Love first lit his torch and made in the darkness a great
light.

What was age if one didn’t feel it? Why should she mind it if he didn’t?
No stranger seeing them would suppose there was a difference that
mattered. He made her young; and she would stay young for ever in his
love. <i>La chair de femme se nourrit de caresses</i> ... she had read that
somewhere, in the old days of George, and thought what stuff. Now she
began to believe it. Look at her in the glass--quite young, really quite
young. Love. Miraculous love, that could do all things. And suppose
after a while she did begin to grow old, he would have got used to her
by then, and perhaps not notice it.

So one day, tired of fighting, and in a sudden reckless mood, she said
she would marry him; and as soon as possible after that they were
married at the registrar’s in Princes Row, the witnesses being Mrs.
Mitcham, as usual hoping for the best and in new bonnet-strings, and
Lewes, who was so much upset that he could hardly sign the certificate,
from which stared out at him in plain words the disastrous facts--widow,
forty-seven, bachelor, twenty-five--and together went straight into what
Christopher knew was heaven but Catherine spoke of placidly as the Isle
of Wight.

Up to this point Catherine had loved Christopher, but not been in love
with him. It was a happy state. It had a kind of agreeable, warm
security. He was in love, and she only loved. He poured out his heart,
and she took it and was comforted. He made her forget Chickover, and
Stephen and Virginia, and he woo’d and woo’d till her face was all lit
up with the reassurance of his sweet flatteries. Her vanity was fed to
the point of beatitude. She smiled even in her sleep. But she remained
fundamentally untouched, and would have said, if obliged to think it
out, that her love for him didn’t differ much in degree from the love
she had had for Virginia. That was a great love, this was a great love.
They were different in kind, of course, but not in degree. One couldn’t
do more, she thought, than just love.

After she was married, however, she found that one could: one could not
only love but fall in love--two entirely distinct things, as she at once
and rather uneasily became aware. He had said, in the early days when
she used to be angry with him, that being in love was catching. She
hadn’t caught it from him during the whole of his wooing, but she did on
their honeymoon, and fell in love with a helpless completeness that
amazed and frightened her. So this was what it was like. This was that
thing they called passion, that had lurked in music and made her cry,
and had flashed out of poetry and made her quiver--at long intervals, at
long, long intervals in the sunny, empty years that had been her life.
Now it had got her; and was it pain or joy? Why, it was joy. But joy so
acute, so excessive, that the least touch would turn it into agony, a
heaven so perfect that the least flaw, the least shadow, would ruin it
into hell. How would she bear it, she thought, staring aghast at these
violent new emotions, if he were ever to love her less? There were no
half measures left now, she felt, no half tones, no neutral zones. It
was either all light, or would be, and how terrifyingly, all black.

They had taken a furnished cottage on the pleasant road that runs along
near the sea between St. Lawrence and Blackgang. The little house faced
the sea, which lay at the end of a meadow full of buttercups, for it
was the time of buttercups, on the other side of the road. A woman from
St. Lawrence came and looked after them by day, and at night they had
the house and the tiny garden and the quiet road and the whispering pine
trees and the murmuring sea to themselves. These were the days of her
poetry, and she said to herself--and she said it too to him, her lips
against his ear--that he had made the difference in her life between an
unlit room and the same room when the lamp is brought in; a beautiful
lamp, she whispered, with a silver stem, and its flame the colour of the
heart of a rose.

And Christopher’s answer was the answer of all young lovers not two days
married, and it did seem to them both that they were actually in heaven.

Such happiness had not appeared to either of them possible, such a
sudden revelation of what life could be, what life really was, when
filled to the brim with only love. She loved him passionately, she no
longer thought of anything or any one in the world but him. Now that it
had come upon her at last, late in her life, it seemed to catch her up
into an agonising bliss. Who was she, what had she done, to have this
extraordinary young love flung at her feet? And Christopher told himself
that he had always known it, he had always known that if he could only
wake her up, rouse her out of her sleep, she would be the most wonderful
of lovers.

They never laughed. They were dead serious. They talked mostly in
whispers, because passion always whispers; and for three days in that
happy, empty island, from whence the Easter tourists had departed and to
which the summer tourists had not yet come, down by the sea, up in the
woods, along through the buttercups, the sun shone on them by day and
the stars by night, and there was no smallest falling off in ecstasy.

Three days. The third day is usually the crucial one of a honeymoon, but
never having been on honeymoons before--the sweet word could not, she
felt, be applied to George’s wedding tour, and anyhow she had forgotten
that--they neither of them knew it, and Christopher was so young that
they passed through this day too at the highest pitch of happiness.

Then, on the fourth morning, Christopher breakfasted alone, for
Catherine was asleep when the bell rang and he had told the woman not to
disturb her, and after breakfast, going into the little garden with his
pipe and leaning on the gate staring across the bright and glorious
carpet of brisk buttercups at the sea, he suddenly felt overwhelmingly
disposed to meditation. Private meditation. By himself for a couple of
hours. Or, failing that, he felt he would like a game of golf. Exercise.
Out of doors. With a man.

He wondered where the golf links were; he wondered whether, if he went
to them, he might by some lucky chance find a man he knew. Catherine
didn’t play golf, and he didn’t want her to. He wanted for a bit to be
with a man, to stalk about with a man, and not say anything, except, if
it were necessary, swear, and know all the while that he was going back
to her, going back, amazingly, to his own wife. Or he would like to run
down to the sea and swim a long way, and then dry himself in the sun,
and then go off for a quick, striding walk up the cliffs behind the
house, out into the open where the wind blew fresh, and jolly little
larks sang. Catherine didn’t swim, and couldn’t walk like that, and he
didn’t want her to; he wanted to go off alone, so as to have the joy of
coming back, amazingly, to his own wife.

He went indoors and upstairs to look in at her and see if she were
awake, so that he might tell her he thought of going for a quick run
somewhere. But when he softly opened the door and crept into the room
and found her still asleep, he couldn’t resist kneeling down by the bed
and kissing her; whereupon she opened her eyes, and smiled so incredibly
sweetly at him that he slid his arm round her, and they began, his face
on the pillow beside hers, whispering again.

He went nowhere that day. In the afternoon they lay about together in
the field and read poetry. She asked him to. The desire for silent
meditation was stronger upon him by this time than ever, and he didn’t
want just then to read poetry.

She instantly noticed that he was reading it differently from the way he
had read it on the other days, reading it--but how could this be when he
was so fond of it?--almost reluctantly.

‘Is anything the matter, Chris?’ she asked, bending her face anxiously
over him.

He took it in his two hands. ‘I love you,’ he said.

How tired she looked. He was struck by it, out there in the afternoon
light, as he held her face in his hands.

He became attentive and anxious. ‘Aren’t you well, my darling?’ he
asked, still holding her face.

‘Yes. Quite. Why?’ she answered, wondering. Then added rather quickly,
drawing back, ‘Do I look tired?’

‘You’re so pale.’

‘I don’t <i>feel</i> pale,’ she said, turning her head away so that he could
only see her profile.

She tried to laugh, but she discovered she found it unpleasant to be
asked by Christopher if she didn’t feel well. It meant she must be
looking worn; and passionately she didn’t want to look worn,--not now,
not on her honeymoon, not married to Christopher, not ever. A most
undesirable thing to look, and to be avoided by every means in her
power.

‘I don’t feel pale at all,’ she said again, trying to laugh and keeping
her face turned away from him and the bright sunlight. ‘Inside, anyhow,
I feel all rosy.’

She jumped up. ‘Let’s go for a walk, Chris darling,’ she said, shaking
the buttercups he had stuck about her out of her dress. ‘We haven’t been
for a real good long walk since we got here.’

‘Are you sure you’re not too tired?’ he asked, getting up too.

‘Tired!’

And to show him what she could do, she started off at a great pace and
climbed over the five-barred gate into the road before he could reach
her to help.

But she was tired; and though the quick walk and climb made her hot and
hid her paleness, when she was in her room getting ready for the evening
meal and the heat had faded out of her cheeks, she was startled by her
face. Why, she looked ghastly. Her face seemed to be drooping with
fatigue. The corners of her mouth were pitiful with it, her eyes
appeared sunk in black shadows. And how white she was. She stared at
herself aghast; and a recollection of those pleasant bus-conductors and
taxi-men came into her mind, all smiling at her and calling her Miss as
lately as a week ago, and of her own image in the glass at that time
when, radiant with the cool happiness of not being in love, with the
peace of gratified vanity at having somebody extraordinarily in love
with her, while she herself loved him quite enough but not too much, she
might have been and was so easily taken for really young.

Really young ... ah, what a lovely thing to be ... married to
Christopher and really young....

The lamp in the cottage was like all lamps in cottages, and unpleasantly
glared. There was only one, and that one was now in the living-room, and
at meals stood on the table; and it had a white glass shade, and who
older than twenty-five could expect to stand light from a lamp with a
white glass shade after a long, hot, hilly walk? Even in her bedroom,
lit up only by two hesitating candle-flames, she looked worn out, so
what would she look like down there, faced by Christopher’s searching
eyes and that intolerable lamp?

It was as she had feared, and he did stare at her--at first with open
concern and questioning, and afterwards furtively, for she couldn’t help
showing she shrank from having her fatigue noticed. At the beginning of
their acquaintance she used to laugh when he told her she looked tired,
and say she wasn’t tired a bit, and it was merely age made her seem so;
she was perfectly frank and natural about it; she didn’t in the least
care. Now she couldn’t laugh, she found--she couldn’t bring herself to
say, with the gay indifference, the take-me-as-I-am-or-leave-me attitude
that was hers at the beginning, a word about age.

She hurried through the meal, and got up before he had finished, and
went and stood at the open window, looking at the stars.

‘What is it, my darling?’ asked Christopher anxiously, pushing away his
plate and coming after her.

‘It’s such a lovely night. Let’s put out that stupid lamp, and then we
can see the stars.’

‘But then we shan’t see each other.’

‘Do we want to?’

That was true; why see, when you can feel?

They put out the lamp, and sat at the open window smelling the sweet
night air, full of scents of damp grass and the sea, and he forgot his
fears, for in the dark she seemed quite well again, and he talked
sweetly to her, his arms round her, her head upon his breast, of their
happiness, and their love, and the perfect life they were going to have
together for the rest of their days; and she listened, pressing close to
him, painfully adoring him, shutting her mind against the remembrance of
that face in the glass, of that frightening face, of that face as it
would be every day soon when she was a little older, as it would be now
already each time she was overtired, or nervy, or the least thing
happened to worry her. Only she wouldn’t be overtired or nervy; and as
for things happening to worry her, what could do that in this haven of
safety she had got into with Christopher? And she would take the utmost
care of herself, now that she was so precious to somebody so dear, and
see to it that she kept well and strong; and nerves after all had never
in her life yet afflicted her,--the utmost sunny tranquillity of mind
and body had been hers always; why should she even think of such things?
The idea must have got into her head because of the funny feeling she
had had that day, the fourth of her happiness, of being on wires. She
had been jumpy. The smallest noise or sudden movement made her start.
And her body had a queer kind of tingling sensation in it, an
uncomfortable sensation of being exposed, raw at the surface; and her
skin felt sensitive, as though it were all rubbed the wrong way; and
besides, quite without any reason that she could discover, she had
wanted several times that afternoon to cry.

She shook herself. Silly thoughts. All imagination. Here was
Christopher, so real, dear, and close....

She put her arm round his neck and pulled herself up a little higher,
and laid her cheek against his. ‘I didn’t know one could be so happy,’
she said, clinging to him.

‘My darling love,’ he said, holding her tight.

They began to whisper.




II


But though night is good, and stars are good, and sweet communion is
very good, with one’s beloved lying soft and warm in one’s arms, day
also is good, and the stir and zest of it, and men’s voices, and the
wind along the heath.

Such were Christopher’s conclusions when he had been married a week. He
leant on the gate after breakfast on the first weekly anniversary of his
wedding day, smoking and gazing at the field of buttercups that so
gorgeously embroidered the edges of the sea, and reflected that you have
to have both--the blissful night, the active day, so as completely to
appreciate either. That is, if your life is to be as near perfect as
possible. And why shouldn’t his life be as near perfect as possible? It
had all the necessary ingredients--youth, health, and Catherine. Only,
for a day to be happy it must not be too much like the night; there must
be a contrast, and there must be a complete contrast. In the days and
nights of the last week there had been hardly any contrast, and wasn’t
contrast in life as indispensable as salt in cooking? Bliss there had
been, bliss in quantities, wonderful quantities; wild bliss, then quiet
bliss, then wild bliss again, then quiet bliss, but always bliss. He
adored Catherine. Life was marvellous. On that fine May morning he was
certain he was the happiest human being in the island, for nobody could
possibly be happier, nor could anybody be as happy, for nobody else had
Catherine; but he wished that that day----

Well, what did he wish that day? It wasn’t possible that he wanted to be
away from Catherine, yet he did want to,--for a few hours, for a little
while; why, if only to have the joy of coming back to her. He was
conscious, and the consciousness surprised him, that he didn’t want to
kiss her for a bit. No, he didn’t. And fancy not wanting to, when a
month ago he would have sold everything he had, including his soul, to
be allowed to! That came, thought Christopher, narrowing his eyes to
watch a white sail out at sea bending in the wind--Jove, how jolly it
looked, scudding along like that--of not having contrast. There had to
be interruption, pause, the mind switched off on to something else. How
could one ever know the joy of coming back if one didn’t first go?

He wanted to go that day, to go by himself, to do things she couldn’t
do, and then come back all new to her again. He wanted to tramp miles in
the wind he knew was blowing gloriously beyond their sheltering
cliff--look how that yacht cut through the sea--up out into the open
country where the larks were singing; miles and miles he wanted to tramp
in the sun, and stretch all his slack muscles, and get into an almighty
sweat, and drink great draughts of beer, and rid himself of the sort of
sticky languor that was laying hold of him. He couldn’t spend another
day just sitting about or strolling gently round; he must be up and
doing.

Catherine wasn’t able to come with him, and he didn’t want her to. She
said the spring always made her lazy at first, till she got used to it.
She certainly wasn’t able to walk as she had walked with him before her
marriage, and was very evidently soon tired, and sometimes looked so
extraordinarily tired that it frightened him. She ought to rest, these
first spring days, then, just as he ought to take violent exercise. She
slept now very late into the morning, and he was glad she did, his tired
little love; but even that didn’t seem to make her be able to be active
for the rest of the day. He was glad she did sleep late, only it did
break up the day a bit, not knowing when she was coming down. It kept
one hanging about, unable to plan anything. If he could be certain she
wouldn’t wake up, say, till lunch time, he could do a lot in the
morning, but as it was he couldn’t do anything but just wait. And he
always forgot at night to tell her that if she found he wasn’t there
next day when she came down it would be because he had gone for a tramp,
but he would be back to lunch. He always forgot at night, because at
night the thing called next morning seemed so completely unimportant and
uninteresting. He forgot everything at night, except Catherine and love.
And then, in its turn, came morning; and it was important, and it was
interesting.

He opened the gate and went out into the road. The baker’s cart from
Ventnor was swinging round the corner on its two high wheels, the boy
cracking his whip and whistling. Enough to make any one whistle, a day
like that. The boy grinned at him as he passed, and he grinned back. He
would have liked to be driving that fast little mare himself, and
shouting out triumphant epithalamiums as he drove. What was the plural
of epithalamium? He must ask Lewes. Dash it all, why couldn’t one have
one’s friends about one more? They were always somewhere else. If Lewes
were there now they could join the golf club and have a gorgeous time.
Lewes was very good at golf. Lewes was good at everything, really; and
it wasn’t his fault if he was so damned clever into the bargain and
nosed away most of his life in books. Besides, one could swear at Lewes,
be absolutely natural, say any old thing that came into one’s head. With
a woman, with the dearest of women, with her whom one worshipped body,
soul and mind, there was a being-in-the-drawing-room flavour about
things; and after a bout of drawing-room one wanted a bout of
public-house,--putting it roughly, that is, putting it very roughly.
Catherine, his beloved, to whom he whispered things he could never tell
another human being, to whom he told every thought he had of beauty and
romance, was more or less the drawing-room, and Lewes, who drank only
water, and who, though he listened unmoved to any oath on any subject,
was himself in his language most choice, was more or less the
public-house.

He strolled aimlessly about the road, kicking stones out of his path. He
wished old Lewes would appear round the bend from St. Lawrence, and see
for himself what happiness was like. He had been a fool from the start
about Catherine, Lewes had. All wrong. The poor chap hadn’t a notion
what love was. But if he didn’t know about love he knew about most other
things, and it would be jolly to have a yarn with him, and listen to him
being clever.

Christopher looked up the road, and down the road, almost as if, in
answer to his wish, Lewes must appear. The young leaves were bursting
out in the woods on either side, making delicate shadows on the dust.
The sky was intensely blue, and a warm wind full of the scent of
hawthorns tossed the small fat white clouds across it. God, what a day,
what a day to do something tremendous in!

He turned quickly, and went back to the cottage, and looking up at
Catherine’s window whistled softly. If she were awake she would come to
the window, and he would tell her he was going for a quick walk; if she
wasn’t awake he would leave a note for her and be off.

The bedroom window was open, but the curtains were drawn.

He whistled again, and watched for a movement behind them.

Nothing stirred.

He went indoors, scribbled a note saying he would be back to lunch, left
it on the table of the sitting-room, seized a stick, and started down
the path and up the road with great energetic strides in the direction
of Blackgang. It was eleven o’clock, and he would walk as hard as he
knew how for two hours. That ought to do him good; that ought to take
the slackness out of him. Oh, jolly, jolly to be walking again, really
walking....

But hardly had he got a few yards from the cottage when he heard
Catherine calling. He heard her little voice through all the scrunchings
of his footsteps on the road and the rustlings of spring in the trees,
as he would hear it, he was sure, if she should call him from the sleep
of death.

He stopped, and went back slowly.

She was at the bedroom window, holding the curtains a tiny strip apart,
for she shrank from showing herself to him at the window in the morning
light before she had had time to do what she could for her silly face,
which was being so tiresome these days and looking so persistently
haggard.

‘Chris--Chris--where are you going?’ she called.

‘I left you a note, darling.’

‘A note? Why?’

‘I didn’t want to wake you. I’m going for a walk.’

‘Oh I’d love to come too--wait five minutes----’

‘But I want to go very quick, and as far as I can before lunch.’

‘Don’t let’s come back to lunch, then we needn’t hurry. I’ll be down in
five seconds.’

And he heard sounds of hasty moving about the room.

He sat down on the verandah-step and lit his pipe. Well, it couldn’t be
helped; he must wait till to-morrow for his exercise.

She wasn’t five seconds but twenty-five minutes, but when she did come
down in a broad-brimmed hat that shaded her face, and smiled her sweet
smile at him and slipped her hand through his arm, he cheerfully gave up
the idea of fierce solitary exercise and was glad she was there. His
darling. His Catherine. His dream of happiness come true. His
astonishing angel-wife.

‘Let’s stay out all day,’ she said, as they walked up the road, again in
the direction of Blackgang but at a moderate pace that would never, he
knew, however long it went on, get a drop of the sweat he craved for out
of him.

‘But we haven’t brought food.’

‘We’ll get the hotel at Blackgang to cut us some sandwiches and take
them with us. Oh Chris, isn’t it a gorgeous day! Did you ever know
anything like it? Oh, I’m so happy. By the way--good morning.’

She stopped and held up her face. He laughed and kissed it.

‘Darling,’ he said, kissing her again. Yes; it would have been beastly
of him to go off and leave her, to go off and let her wake up and find
herself alone.

At the hotel they asked, as Catherine had suggested, for lunch to take
with them, and while it was being got ready went out through the heat
and hot-house flowers of the glass verandah to the fresh garden glowing
and blowing with the blossoms of May. It was a sight, that garden on the
cliffs above the sea, jewelled with tulips, frothed with fruit-blossom,
and just beyond it, splendidly holding it in with a golden circlet,
gorse.

‘It’s much more beautiful here than at our cottage,’ said Catherine,
looking about her.

‘How could anything ever be more beautiful than our cottage?’ he
answered; and she smiled at him, love in her eyes, and softly slid her
hand along his sleeve.

In the garden, reading <i>The Times</i>, was Mr. Jerrold, the eminent editor
of the <i>Saturday Judge</i>, who with his daughter Sybil to keep him company
had come down from London for a fortnight’s rest and quiet. He had
rested now for a whole week, and was beginning to feel that quiet can be
overdone. His daughter Sybil had long been aware of it. The hotel was
empty--he had hoped it would be when he engaged his rooms, but now
thought that perhaps some one else in it might not be wholly
disagreeable--and when, on raising his eyes from <i>The Times</i> he saw two
visitors emerging from the glass verandah in which he spent his solitary
evenings reading among pots of cinerarias, he was glad.

So was his daughter Sybil, who had been down the cliff and up again
three times already since breakfast, and was wondering what she could do
with the rest of the morning till lunch-time.

Mr. Jerrold watched the new arrivals with deep interest. They would be
a great addition to the party, if he and his daughter could properly be
described as a party. The young man was a good type of clean,
nice-looking young Englishman, public school and university, and would
do admirably to play about with poor Billy, thwarted in her desire for
prolonged and violent exercise by his inability to take it with her,
while he would find the lady, who seemed just about that agreeable age
when conversation is preferred to activity, a pleasant companion
meanwhile.

He awaited their passing where he and Billy were sitting in
basket-chairs under some hawthorns; when they did, he would ask them if
they had seen that morning’s <i>Times</i>, and thus open up channels of
friendship.

But the new arrivals edged away across the grass, not yet realising, no
doubt, how rare was intercourse in that lonely spot and accordingly how
precious. So he got up and strolled after them--(‘Poor father,’ thought
his daughter, who only knew him as reserved, ‘I had no idea he has been
as bored as all that’)--and overtook them at the edge of the garden,
where they were gazing at the sea, brilliant blue between the great
orange-coloured branches of the gorse.

‘Wonderful colour, isn’t it,’ said Mr. Jerrold pleasantly, waving his
<i>Times</i> at the gorse and the sea.

‘Marvellous,’ said the young man heartily.

‘Too wonderful,’ cooed the lady.

In a few minutes they were talking as friends, the young man in
particular, who on closer view was even more what Mr. Jerrold felt sure
would amuse poor Billy, being very friendly.

Mr. Jerrold called to his daughter, who had stayed in her basket-chair.

‘Come and be introduced, Billy,’ he called; and when she had come he
presented her to the lady.

‘My daughter Sybil,’ said Mr. Jerrold, expecting in return to be told
the names of the attractive new arrivals.

He was told. ‘Our name is Monckton,’ said the young man, laughing and
turning redder than ever,--why should he laugh and turn red? wondered
Mr. Jerrold, unaware that this was the very first time Christopher had
spoken of himself and Catherine collectively as Monckton.

‘Ours is Jerrold,’ said Mr. Jerrold; and proceeded pleasantly to assure
the lady that she would find the hotel comfortable.

It was a real disappointment, so much did he like the look of both of
them, so admirably did their ages fit in with his and Billy’s, to be
told they were not going to stay there but had only come over from St.
Lawrence, where they had a cottage, to get some food to take with them
on a walk.

Both the Jerrolds’ faces fell at this. Billy’s broad smile seemed to
contract by about half a yard. She had two long rows of very white
teeth, endless rows they seemed, so wide was her smile, and they looked
even whiter than they were because the sea wind had tanned her face. Her
eyes, too, looked bluer than they were for the same reason, and the
sunshine of a week spent hatless had bleached her hair the colour of
flax. She was a sturdy creature, firm on solid ankles, and not
particularly pretty, but as she stood there bareheaded, and the wind
blew her fair hair across her forehead, and she smiled immensely at
everybody, she fitted in with complete harmony to the young jollity of
the morning and the month.

Christopher thought she looked like a good-natured young shark.

‘What an awful pity,’ she said. ‘We might have gone for excursions
together.’

And she said it with such a heartiness of chagrin that they all laughed.

The end of it was that when the sandwiches came and the Moncktons went,
the Jerrolds, still talking, went with them, first to the entrance of
the hotel garden, then into the road, then, still talking, along the
road.

The Jerrolds not having talked for a week were unable now to leave off.
Mr. Jerrold found himself wishing to tell the small agreeable lady who
he was, and why, and how, and did so with a completeness that surprised
himself. His daughter, striding on ahead with the young man--they seemed
naturally to shoot ahead together, the two young ones, the minute they
got on to the road--explained just as completely to her companion, who
appeared at once to tumble to it, the dreadful feeling of being about to
burst after a week’s flopping round with somebody who couldn’t be left
while one rushed all over the island, and couldn’t, owing to age and
infirmity and being a father and all that, rush too.

‘Just look at those youngsters forging along,’ said Mr. Jerrold, smiling
complacently at the two figures in front, at their four
worsted-stockinged legs moving so quickly in step, at their swinging
arms, and their bare heads turned to each other while they talked and
laughed.

His companion looked, but said nothing. He wondered what relation she
was to the young man that she too should be a Monckton, and decided
that she must be either his father’s second wife or his aunt by
marriage. Not a blood relation, clearly; they were too much unlike.

‘Is there anything more delightful in the world,’ said Mr. Jerrold,
gazing benevolently at the pair ahead, ‘than a wholesome English boy and
girl?’

At this his companion murmured something that he understood meant that
the two would soon be out of sight, which they certainly would be if
they went on at that pace, and he said, ‘Yes--quite. Hi, there,’ he
called, ‘you youngsters! Steady--we can’t keep up!’

But the wind was against him, and they strode on unheeding.

‘Not that,’ said Mr. Jerrold, turning gallantly to the lady, ‘it would
be anything but my gain if they did go on. Why not let them? And you and
I sit down somewhere and talk.’

‘But Christopher has got the sandwiches,’ said his new friend.

‘So he has. Christopher. Delightful name. Attractive youth. Well, let
Christopher eat them, sharing them with Billy somewhere at the end of
their first twenty miles or so, and allow me the pleasure of offering
you lunch in the hotel.’

‘How very kind of you. But Christopher----’

‘Well, you see he doesn’t hear,’ said Mr. Jerrold. ‘I don’t suppose
he’ll even notice that we’re not following. When young people get
together.... I assure you it would give me the greatest pleasure to
entertain you, and we can sit afterwards in that nice garden in
comfortable chairs till they come back.’

Mr. Jerrold paused persuasively in the road. After a week of not
speaking to a soul but his daughter he ached to entertain. The two on in
front turned a corner and disappeared. Mr. Jerrold, whose wife had been
dead some years, felt the situation unfolding romantically. This was a
dear little lady, and she looked as though she needed taking care of. He
had a strong wish to give her lunch.

‘But----’ she began.

‘We will consider no buts,’ said Mr. Jerrold, even more gallantly. ‘Your
nephew--is he your nephew?--won’t notice----’

‘He’s my husband,’ said the little lady, flushing a very bright scarlet.

Well; what a surprise. Mr. Jerrold was really most surprised. Not that
the lady wasn’t, he was sure, a most agreeable wife for any man to have,
but that the young man seemed so very young to have one at all; and if
at all she ought, to match him, be a mere slip of a girl,--somebody
about Billy’s age.

Yes; it was a surprise. Mr. Jerrold didn’t quite know what to say.

‘In that case----’ he began.

But really he hadn’t an idea what to say, and stood in the middle of the
road staring down at the little lady through his monocle--he wore a
monocle--and she stared back at him, while the flush slowly ebbed away
out of her face.




III


Her nephew. So that was what Christopher seemed to be to this impartial
stranger. It gave Catherine more than a shock, it made her heart feel as
if it stood still. And his surprise, his humiliating surprise, when she
said Christopher was her husband, and her own discomfort when she told
him....

Was it so much marked, then, the difference between them? It hadn’t been
in London. Why, in London before they married they had often stood arm
in arm in front of a glass and laughed to see how no one would guess,
really no one could possibly guess, that they were not very nearly of an
age. Besides what about all those bus-conductors and people calling her
Miss? One of them had even called her Missie--‘Take care, now, Missie,’
he had said, catching her by the arm, ‘don’t you go jumping off before
we’re stopped and breaking your neck and getting us into trouble with
your young man’--but he, she was afraid, had been drinking. It must be
because she was so tired now always that she looked older. To-day she
was tired, yesterday she had been tired--oh, but so tired, so <i>tired</i>.

She stared up at Mr. Jerrold, while the flush faded out of her face, and
thought how dreadful it was going to be if every time she was tired
people took her for Christopher’s aunt. What a humiliation. And
inevitably sooner or later he would notice it himself, and hear it too
from strangers, just as she was hearing it from this stranger.

‘Let us sit down,’ said Mr. Jerrold sensibly, ‘and wait for them to come
back.’

And a day or two afterwards, when Christopher, impelled by his desire
for movement, by a terrific longing to do something, anything, that
wasn’t lying in grass reading poetry to Catherine--if he didn’t read
poetry to her she was surprised and asked him why, because at the
beginning he had wanted to do nothing else--hired a two-seater and drove
her round the island, stopping for the night at a little place on the
west side where there was a small hotel they liked the look of, on their
going in and asking if they could be put up for the night the young lady
in the office, glancing at them, said she was very sorry but she had
only one room vacant.

‘But we only want one,’ said Christopher, surprised at this answer. ‘We
want a double room, that’s all.’

‘Oh, I’m sorry----’ said the young lady, turning red and bending over
her ledger to hide her confusion. ‘Yes----’ she said, running her
finger down the page, ‘I can give you No. 7.’

‘Do you think she thought we weren’t married?’ said Christopher, amused,
when they were in No. 7 undoing their suit-cases. ‘Or do you think she
thought we were so grand that we couldn’t do without a sitting-room?’

Catherine, very busy it seemed with her suit-case, said nothing. She
couldn’t have. She felt sick, as if some one had hit her head. Again she
had been taken for Christopher’s aunt. Or even for his--no, her mind
swerved aside from that word; it simply refused to look at it.

They saw no more of the Jerrolds, though Christopher had talked of long
and violent scrambles with the eagerly acquiescent Billy while they
sprinted on ahead that morning before he realised that Catherine had
been left behind out of sight. When he did discover this he had turned
back at once. ‘Come on,’ he had said to the surprised Billy, seizing her
wrist, ‘we must run.’

And he had run; and she had run, thinking it great fun but wondering why
they should be running; and after that, when they all joined up again,
her father had taken her back to the hotel and the Moncktons had gone
for their picnic by themselves, and she had never set eyes on them again
nor heard anything more of the promised scrambles.

But one thing she had heard, and with astonishment, from her father, and
that was that Mr. Monckton was Mrs. Monckton’s husband.

‘No!’ cried Billy, her eyes very round; adding, after a silence, ‘Good
Lord.’

‘Quite,’ said her father.

A few days more and the honeymoon was at an end. Christopher had not
attempted again to leave Catherine, for she didn’t seem well, though she
assured him she was,--assured him eagerly, almost painfully eagerly, and
that it was only the spring. He wasn’t quite able to believe this, and
stayed with her and petted her. She loved to lie quite quiet in his
arms, out of doors or anywhere, while he read to her or they both
snoozed. He suppressed his fidgetings, because he knew if he said he
wanted to walk she would want to walk with him, and then she would be
tired out and he after all not exercised. It struck him once as odd how
little they talked. They used to talk and talk before they were married.
Now they hardly said anything, except when they began to whisper, and
then it wasn’t talk, but emotion clothing itself scantily in words.
Still, it had been a heavenly, heavenly time; something to remember
joyfully all one’s days.

‘When we’re old,’ he said, the last evening, ‘how we shall think of
this.’

Just as if, she thought, pressing close to him so as to hide from the
thought, when he had got to the stage of being old she wouldn’t, far
ahead of him, be long past thinking at all.

He had to be back at his office the end of the second week, and the last
night in their abode of bliss they hardly slept at all, so loth were
they to lose any minutes of what was left of their honeymoon in
unconsciousness; and the effect of this was that in the morning, while
Christopher was as blithe as a lark and breakfasted cheerfully and
packed up with zeal, Catherine could hardly move for fatigue, and was
really shocked by her leaden face when she saw it in the glass.

Luckily he noticed nothing that time; he was too busy packing up, too
much pleased in the fresh morning to be doing something different, to be
starting on a journey. Besides, wasn’t he going to work like a navvy
now? Hadn’t he got something to work for,--responsibilities, the
sweetest, most wonderful in the world? He itched to be at it, to do
well, make her proud of him, earn money for her as that old George had
earned money for her.

With gusto he swept his scattered things into his suit-case, whistling
the love music out of <i>The Immortal Hour</i> as he packed, with gusto he
settled the bills and tipped the woman, with gusto he walked, his arm
through Catherine’s, down the path to the gate for the last time, and
waved to the buttercup-field in which he would not again have to lie. He
was in high spirits. It was jolly getting back to work, beginning it
again in these new delicious conditions, with Catherine to speed him in
the morning and welcome him back at night. Now he would have variety;
now he would have work and love, absence and presence, in their right
proportion.

He was very happy. It seemed incredible to him, as he fondly looked down
at her when they were in the bright warm sunshine on the ferry, that he
had actually attained his heart’s desire and got Catherine. Life was
splendid,--packed with possibilities, a thing of the utmost
magnificence. The waters of the Solent danced and sparkled; white wings
flashed out of the deep blue of the sky; the sun lay hot across the back
of his neck; the wind was fresh and salt in his face; the world looked
as it must have looked on the morning of its first day. Old Lewes--he
would go and dig out old Lewes to-morrow, and make him come and lunch in
one of those jolly little restaurants where the food was good and ladies
didn’t go, and yarn his head off. And on Saturday he would take
Catherine down and introduce her to his uncle, who would certainly adore
her, and she would wander about the garden and enjoy her darling little
self while he gave the old boy the round of golf he knew he was
thirsting for. So was he thirsting for it. His honeymoon had been
wonderful, but a fortnight is enough. It wouldn’t of course be enough,
and one would never then want it to end, if one were going to be torn
from one’s beloved when it was over. But here they were, he and she,
entering into the joys, the varied joys of married life, with him, the
male, girding up his loins in the morning and going forth to labour
until the evening, as men from time immemorial had girded themselves and
gone forth, and coming back at night to his nest and his mate. And this
after all was better in the long run than a honeymoon, just as real good
bread and butter was better than everlasting cake.

‘I’m so happy,’ he said, slipping his arm round her and giving her a
quick hug when no one was looking. He couldn’t see her face; she was
sitting too close to him, besides having put on a gauze motor-veil.

‘Darling Chris,’ she murmured, smiling through her veil.

But she would have liked it better if he hadn’t been quite so
exuberantly happy on that particular morning. After all, it was the
finish of their honeymoon, and they would never have one again. Yet
perhaps it was as well it was finished. Once at home and he at work, she
would be able to sleep at least all day....

In London Mrs. Mitcham, anxious to do the right thing, had filled
George’s different bits of china with white flowers, and the
drawing-room with its heavy black furniture looked more like a carefully
kept-up memorial than ever. She herself was very clean and spruce in her
best apron, and her face was wreathed in the proper welcoming smiles,
though she was in fact excessively nervous and embarrassed. She had
always liked Christopher, with the indulgent liking of the elderly
female servant for the irrepressible young gentleman, and she was
thoroughly aware that marriage was marriage, yet she couldn’t help
turning a little red when he marched into her mistress’s bedroom as if
it were his. So it was his; but for years and years it hadn’t been his,
and for years and years before that it not only hadn’t been his but had
been poor Mr. Cumfrit’s. It was her vivid recollection of poor Mr.
Cumfrit--the times she had taken him and Mrs. Cumfrit their morning tea
into that very room, and they always so pleasant and content together in
their double bed--that gave her this feeling of shock when she saw
Christopher walking in.

Mrs. Mitcham, who was so well trained that her very thoughts were
respectful, wouldn’t have dreamed of comparing Christopher to a cuckoo,
but she had heard of the bird’s habits in regard to nests not originally
its own, and deep down in the vast dark regions of her subconsciousness,
where no training had ever set its foot and simple candour prevailed,
was the recognition of the fact that her mistress was the natural prey
of cuckoos,--first Stephen, turning her out of her original nest, now
Christopher, taking possession of this one.

She could only hope that all would be well. What wasn’t well, plain
enough for any one to see, was her mistress. Mrs. Mitcham couldn’t have
believed such a change possible in that short time. ‘It’s them
honeymoons,’ she said to herself, shaking her head over her saucepans.
They did no good to a woman, she thought, not after a certain age. You
had to be very strong to put up with them at any time. No rest. No
regular hours. Never knew where you were. <i>He</i> looked all right, the
young gentleman did, and it wasn’t for not being happy that her mistress
didn’t, for already, in the quarter of an hour since they had arrived,
Mrs. Mitcham had seen more love about in the flat than she could
remember during the whole of poor Mr. Cumfrit’s time in it. She couldn’t
help wondering what that poor gentleman would say if he could see what
was happening in his flat. He wouldn’t much like it, she was afraid;
but perhaps hardly anybody who was dead would much like what they would
see, supposing they were able to come back and look. Even Mitcham
wouldn’t. What Mitcham wouldn’t like seeing, if there was nothing else
for him to grumble about, would be how well she had got on without him.

She carried the asparagus into the dining-room. Once again, as she
opened the door, she felt uncomfortable. How should she have thought of
knocking first? She had never had to knock at any except bedroom doors
since she had been in service. Whenever she happened to go into a room
everything would be just as nice and what you’d expect as possible: Mr.
Cumfrit at the head of the table, taking a sip of claret, Mrs. Cumfrit
on his right hand, quietly eating her toast. ‘I’ve done a good stroke of
business to-day,’ Mr. Cumfrit would be saying. ‘I’m so glad, George
dear,’ Mrs. Cumfrit would be answering. Things like that would be going
on in the room, things you’d expect. Or, in the drawing-room, Mr.
Cumfrit would be one side of the fire, Mrs. Cumfrit the other, reading
out bits of the evening paper to each other. ‘Seems to me this wretched
Government doesn’t know what it wants,’ Mr. Cumfrit would be saying. ‘It
does seem so, doesn’t it, George dear,’ Mrs. Cumfrit would be answering,
quiet and ladylike.

But this....

Impossible for Mrs. Mitcham not to start and draw back when she opened
the door. She all but scattered the lovely asparagus over the carpet.
She wasn’t used--and her mistress, too--she couldn’t have believed----

‘Come in, come in, Mrs. Mitcham,’ the young gentleman called out gaily,
picking up his napkin which had fallen on to the floor. ‘We’re married,
you know. It’s all right. You signed the certificate yourself.’

Mrs. Mitcham smiled nervously. The sauce-boat rattled in its dish as she
handed it to her mistress. She wasn’t used to this sort of thing.




IV


That evening, sentimentally, they went to <i>The Immortal Hour</i>. In this
very place, only two months back, they had been sitting apart hardly
aware of each other, hardly more than looking at each other out of the
corners of their eyes.

‘Do you remember the night I first moved up next to you?’ Christopher
whispered.

‘Don’t I,’ she murmured.

‘Oh, Catherine--isn’t it wonderful to think we’re married!’ he
whispered.

‘Sh-sh-,’ hissed the audience, still sparse and still ferocious.

She was in bliss again. He loved her so. He had been so utterly charming
in Hertford Street, boyishly delighted with everything, filling the dull
little flat with youth, and all that youth trails with it of clouds of
glory--laughter, happiness, radiant confidence. Amazing to have this
there after George, after the quiet years since George.

By the evening she was tired, horribly tired, and knew she looked like a
ghost; but she didn’t mind as long as it was dark and he couldn’t see
her silly white face and smudged, haggard eyes. There was only one
interval, and her hat would hide her then. <i>The Immortal Hour</i> was such
a nice dark opera: pitch dark for ages in the first act,--so restful, so
soothing.

She went sound asleep, her head against his arm. He didn’t know she was
asleep, and was thinking all the time of how they were both thinking and
feeling the same things exactly, he and she who owed each other to the
for-ever-to-be-adored <i>Immortal Hour</i>.

‘Darling, darling,’ he murmured, stooping and trying to kiss her at the
darkest moment. This bliss of unity with the perfect love, this end of
loneliness, this enveloping joy....

She slept profoundly.

However, she woke when the curtain went down before the second part of
the act, and those of the audience who were new to it clapped in spite
of the music going on, and those who weren’t new indignantly hissed at
them, and sat up and pulled her hat straight. It was the same funny
little extinguishing hat she used to wear at the beginning; he had
specially asked her to put it on.

‘Yes, we must be proper now,’ said Christopher, smiling at her.

‘Sh-sh-,’ hissed the outraged audience.

How familiar it all was; how happy they were. She was glad he didn’t
know she had been asleep. It was awful to have gone to sleep on such an
occasion, but then she was so appallingly tired. Never in her life had
she been tired like this. Ah, here was the love scene beginning ... she
wouldn’t go to sleep now....

Her hand slid into his; his shut tight over it; they sat close, close,
thrilled by memories, by all that the music meant to them; and in the
most beautiful part Catherine felt her thrills grow fainter and fade
away and go out, and again her head drooped against his shoulder and
again she went sound asleep.

‘Oh, I love you, love you,’ whispered Christopher, putting his arm round
her, sure her drooping head was the gesture of abandonment to
irresistible emotion.

‘Sh-sh-,’ hissed the audience.

Afterwards he wanted to take her somewhere to supper.

‘Supper?’ echoed Catherine faintly, who was dying with fatigue.

‘Yes. We must celebrate--drink the health of our home-coming,’ said
Christopher, drawing her hand through his arm and proudly walking her
off to a taxi. His wife. Marvellous. No more slipping away in the crowd
and escaping him now, thank you. ‘Let’s go somewhere where we can dance.
I shall blow up if I don’t let off steam somehow.’

‘Dance?’ echoed Catherine again, still more faintly, as she was swept up
into the taxi.

‘Do you realise we’ve never danced together once yet?’

‘But we can’t go anywhere like that in these clothes.’

That was true. He hadn’t thought of that. Well then, they would dress
properly the next night and go and dance and dance.

Catherine sat back in the seat. Dance? She hadn’t danced for years, not
since before her marriage with George--never since.

She told Christopher this, and he only laughed and said it was high time
she did dance; he adored dancing; he longed to dance with her; they
would often go.

‘Oh, Christopher,’ said Catherine, sliding close up to him, ‘the best
thing of all will be being alone together at home, you and I, in your
precious evenings. Won’t we go there now? Do we really want supper?’

‘Tired, darling?’ he asked, instantly anxious, stooping to look under
her hat.

‘Oh no--not a bit. Not in the least. Really not,’ said Catherine
quickly. ‘But--our first evening--it’s so lovely at home----’

He hung out of the window and redirected the driver. ‘Yes. Of course,’
he said, taking her in his arms. ‘That’s far and away the best of
all----’

And they began to whisper.

Next day he went back to work. When he left at ten o’clock Catherine was
still in bed.

‘Do you mind my not being at breakfast?’ she had asked him when Mrs.
Mitcham very gingerly beat, or, more accurately, delicately patted the
gong.

Mrs. Mitcham had had some moments of painful indecision before doing
anything with the gong. It was altogether a most awkward morning for
her. She had never yet been placed in such a position. Husband and wife,
of course, and all that--she knew all that; but still it did feel
awkward, and she had a queer reluctance to rousing them--almost as if
they were dangerous, as well as embarrassing, to have loose about the
flat. Yet it was breakfast time. Orders were for nine sharp. She did
finally get herself to the gong and timidly tapped it, divided between
duty and her odd reluctance to see her mistress and the young gentleman
come out of that room, to have to face them....

‘Stay there, my darling love,’ said Christopher, smoothing the pillows
and tucking Catherine up as tenderly as if she were a baby. ‘I’ll bring
you your breakfast.’

‘I--never do get up to breakfast,’ she said, after a moment’s
hesitation, smiling at him as he bent over her--she, who had not once
during the whole of George’s time missed being down on the stroke of
half-past eight to pour out his coffee for him and kiss him good-bye on
the door-mat. ‘Good-bye, little woman,’ George used to say, waving to
her before the lift engulfed him. In those days good husbands of good
wives frequently called them little women.

Here now was her chance. She would establish a custom that might save
her. And if she never had got up to breakfast it wouldn’t worry
Christopher that she never did, and he wouldn’t, frowning with concerned
perplexity, ask her searching questions as to being not well. So, by
sleeping on into the mornings after he had gone to work, she might catch
up with rest and dodge those horrid furrows exhaustion was dragging down
her face.

So the habit was started, and Mrs. Mitcham learnt not to expect to see
her till lunch-time. Sometimes she even slept later, and once or twice
stayed in bed all day, not getting up till just in time to dress for
dinner. This, however, only happened during the first two or three
weeks. As time went on Mrs. Mitcham began to be able to count on her
mistress’s having her bath at twelve o’clock and being ready by one.

Mrs. Mitcham was all for her resting and taking care of herself, for she
was much attached to Catherine, but she couldn’t help feeling--she
didn’t permit herself to think it, but she couldn’t help feeling--that
there was something unbecoming in this turning of day into night. There
was plenty of night, Mrs. Mitcham thought, for those who chose to take
it, but of course if----

Mrs. Mitcham, folding up her mistress’s garments, shook her head. And
the garments too--she shook her head at them. Such things had not
hitherto been part of Mrs. Cumfrit’s outfit. Good things she had had, as
good of their kind as one would wish to see,--lawn, silk, fine
embroideries,--but never what Mrs. Mitcham called flimsies. These were
flimsy, and not only flimsy but transparent. Every time Mrs. Mitcham saw
them she was shocked afresh. She couldn’t get used to them. Mrs.
Cumfrit--she corrected herself, and said Mrs. Monckton--had gone out and
bought them the first afternoon of her return from the Isle of Wight;
and she so careful about coals, and turning the electric light out.
There were six nightgowns that you could pull through a wedding-ring,
they went so into nothing. Chiffon nightgowns. Different colours. Pink,
lemon-colour, and so on; and all of them you could see through as plain
as daylight. It was a mercy, thought Mrs. Mitcham, that it was dark at
night. She, who prided herself on Catherine and had always thought her
the ideal of what a lady should be, was much perturbed by these
nightgowns. And the bathroom too--such a litter there now of scented
dusting powder, and scented crystals, and flagons of coloured liquid
that smelt good but improper, thought Mrs. Mitcham, furtively sniffing;
what would poor Mr. Cumfrit say to his bathroom now, he who had never
had a thing in it but a big sponge and a piece of Pears’ soap?

It was after the visit of the Fanshawes that Mrs. Mitcham first found a
lip-stick on Catherine’s dressing-table. She was immensely upset. No
lady she had had to do with had ever had such a thing on her
dressing-table. Powder was different, because one needed powder
sometimes for other things besides one’s face, and also one powdered
babies, and they, poor lambs, couldn’t be suspected of wanting to
appear different from what God had made them. But a lip-stick! Red
stuff. What actresses put on, and those who were no better than they
should be. Her mistress and a lip-stick--what would Miss Virginia say?

The Fanshawes, who were the immediate cause of the buying of the
lip-stick, came to tea the second Sunday after the end of the
honeymoon,--Ned, his mother and sister. They had been extraordinarily
taken aback by Catherine’s appearance. The flat rang with their
exclamations and laments. Catherine, who had been looking sixteen when
they last saw her, Catherine the bright-eyed, the quick of movement,
Catherine with her lovely skin and unruffled brow--they couldn’t get
over it.

Christopher had gone for a walk in the Park after lunch, straining at
his leash, angry at being kept in London this beautiful afternoon
because the Fanshawes insisted on coming and thrusting their inquisitive
noses where they weren’t wanted, and he hadn’t got back when they
arrived, so that Catherine had them to herself at first.

‘Damn those women,’ he had remarked when, after persistent telephoning
and letters and impassioned inquiries as to what had happened to her and
when they might come and see her, Catherine had felt she had better face
it and wrote and told them she was married and asked them to tea that
Sunday to meet her husband. And when he heard that it wasn’t only women
but Ned too, he damned him particularly, on the ground that he had a
silly nose and wore a fur rug up to his chin; and, expressing extreme
disgust at being kept in on his and Catherine’s only real afternoon by
a blighter like that, he went off for a quick turn in the Park,
promising faithfully to be back in time.

He wasn’t; and the Fanshawes got there first, and the flat was echoing
with exclamations when he opened the door.

Catherine was sitting on the sofa, wedged between the two female
Fanshawes, whose arms encircled her and whose free hands stroked her,
and that worm Ned was looking on from his, Christopher’s, special chair.

‘I’ve had influenza--that’s why,’ Catherine was lying as he came in.

‘But fancy not telling us you were married! Fancy not telling us a
word!’

‘Of course it’s what we’ve been dying to have happen for ages--isn’t it,
Ned?’

‘You sweet little thing, we’re so delighted--aren’t we, Ned?’

‘Do tell us all about it. Isn’t he off his head with happiness? How
pleased Virginia must be----’

‘So nice for her to have a father again----’

‘Are they devoted to each other?’

‘Have you been down to Chickover with him yet?’

‘We’re simply aching to see him----’

And there in the doorway he stood.

‘Here <i>is</i> Christopher,’ said Catherine, flushing and half getting up.

They all turned their heads. For a moment nobody spoke. He advanced on
them with outstretched hand, doing his best to smile broadly, to be the
welcoming host.

<i>That</i> young man. That <i>boy</i>. The boy they had found with Catherine one
day, who had rushed out the minute they came in, and Catherine had
laughed when they asked who on earth he was, and said all she knew
about him was that he was certainly mad. <i>That</i> fellow. The youth who
had glared through the window of the car and almost shook his fist....

The Fanshawes couldn’t speak. They couldn’t move either. They were
stunned.




V


At Chickover there had been the most painful consultations between
Stephen and Mrs. Colquhoun as to the best thing to do under the
deplorable circumstances. Should they or should they not tell Virginia?
Could they, indeed, help telling her? Not all, of course; she must never
be told all. The night spent somewhere between Chickover and
London--they both felt that the entire stretch of country between those
two points was from henceforth polluted--the night that made the
scandalous marriage a necessity, must be kept from Virginia for ever.
But it became clear after a week that she must be told something, if
only to account for her not hearing from her mother.

Stephen couldn’t bring himself to let her have the letters. They came at
first, as he had expected, one after the other and all very thick. He
wondered, turning them over in his hand, whether it wasn’t his duty to
open them, but he resisted the strong leaning towards his duty that
lifelong practice in doing it had induced in him, and took the more
dignified course of sending them back unopened. Much more punitive too,
he felt,--leaving the wretched woman completely in the dark as to what
was happening at Chickover and what Virginia was feeling.

Then, when the letters at last left off coming, he watched for
telegrams; he rather expected telegrams.

None came.

Then he was on the look-out for an unannounced arrival; he quite thought
there would be one.

Nothing happened. Just silence.

At the end of the week Virginia said, ‘I can’t think why mother doesn’t
write’--and began to look worried, and write letters herself.

Stephen took them out of the box in the hall and burnt them. ‘Painful,
painful necessities,’ he said to Mrs. Colquhoun; for this letter
business went against the grain--the gentleman grain, he told his
mother, who hardly left him, comforting and advising him as best she
could.

At the end of another week Virginia sent a telegram, or rather was going
to send it but was stopped by Stephen. Clearly she must be told
something. She had said, while writing it: ‘If I don’t get an answer to
this I shall go up to London myself and see if anything is wrong.’

‘Poor child, poor child,’ murmured Mrs. Colquhoun, the moment for
enlightenment having manifestly come. ‘Would you like me to be with
you?’ she whispered in Stephen’s ear.

‘Better not, I think,’ he whispered back.

Alone with Virginia he took her on his knee. She was holding the
telegram she had just written, and was in a hurry to go and send it off.

‘Yes, Stephen--what is it?’ she asked, fretted at being held back, and
worried by this strange silence of her mother’s to the point of being
unlike herself.

‘I am but a clumsy creature,’ he began, overwhelmed by the thought of
the blow about to be delivered--and delivered by his hand, too, his own
loving hand.

He laid his head on her breast, his arms round her, as she sat on his
knee.

This beginning made Virginia still more uneasy; Stephen had never called
himself a clumsy creature before. ‘What is it, darling?’ she asked, very
anxious.

‘What is it not,’ groaned Stephen, holding her tight. To think it was
he, he who so deeply loved her....

‘Oh, Stephen’--Virginia was thoroughly frightened--‘mother?’

‘Yes. Yes. Yours. And Virginia, my loved wife,’ he said, raising his
head and looking at her, ‘believe me I had rather, to spare you, it were
mine.’

Virginia sat like a stone. Her face was stiff and set. The worst had
happened, then. Her little mother, her own sweet little mother, to whom
she had been unkind, unloving, and who had never once failed in kindness
and love to her, was dead.

‘She is dead,’ said Virginia, in a voice so toneless that it sounded
indifferent.

‘How much better,’ thought Stephen, ‘for everybody as well as herself if
she were.’

Aloud he said, his face buried in Virginia’s bosom. ‘No. She is not
dead. Quite the contrary. She is remarrying.’

And as Virginia said nothing, for her breath was taken away by these
blows and counter-blows, he went on: ‘Darling, I would have spared you
if I could. I have tried to spare you. I have tried all these days to
find some way of keeping it from you. Indeed, indeed I have tried----’

‘But, Stephen--why? Why shouldn’t mother marry again?’ asked Virginia,
with the irritability natural to people who have been frightened without
cause, but so unusual in her that Stephen could only account for it by
her physical condition. ‘I think it very strange of her not to tell me,
but why shouldn’t she remarry? Now there’ll be somebody to take care of
her. I’m glad.’

‘Darling----’

He pressed his face still closer to her bosom. He wished he could hide
it there for ever.

‘But I do think,’ said Virginia, reaction against her mother setting in
now she knew she wasn’t dead, as it had set in the day she saw her
trotting safe and sound up the avenue when she had been torn by fears of
an accident, ‘I do think she might have told me. I do think that.’

Her voice had tears in it. She strangled them, and held herself up very
straight, offering no real hospitality to Stephen’s head. She was deeply
wounded.

‘Ah, but there are some things one doesn’t tell,’ said Stephen.

He was miserable. He would have given at least half Chickover to be able
to spare her.

‘Remarrying isn’t one of them,’ she said; and for the first time he
caught a glimpse of another Virginia, a Virginia who perhaps, ten years
ahead, might argue.

He raised his head from her bosom and looked at her again.

‘I know what I am talking about, my child,’ he said. ‘This remarrying
is. She is marrying the young man with whom she motored up to London.
You saw him yourself. Perhaps you will now agree that there are some
things one does not willingly tell one’s daughter.’

Virginia stared at him a moment, her eyes very wide open. Then, without
speaking a word, she got up off his knee and walked over to a window and
stood at it with her back to him.

How strange of her, he thought. What a strange way of meeting
trouble--to go away from him like that, to turn from the love that
longed to help her.

He didn’t know what to do or say next. He sat watching her in the utmost
perplexity. His Virginia, getting up off his knee, withdrawing herself
from his loving arms----

‘Yes,’ she said after a long silence. ‘I can imagine there may be such
things. But I don’t think’--she turned and faced him--‘this is one of
them.’

He got on to his feet and went towards her, his arms outstretched.

‘My darling, my wounded darling,’ he cried, all understanding and
pitifulness, ‘you are generous and young----’

‘So is Mr. Monckton,’ was her unexpected answer.

Really it was like a blow in the face. It stopped him short. It <i>must</i>
be her condition. But all that day the attitude continued, the strange,
almost defiant attitude, and Stephen could only go into his study and
pray that her heart might be softened, and her eyes opened to see things
as they truly were.

Such a grave misfortune--she did not of course know how grave, how
terrible it was--the first in their married life, and to take it this
way, hardening her heart against the sympathy and understanding he and
his mother offered her in such boundless measure, and persisting, with
an obstinacy he wouldn’t have dreamed her capable of, in upholding what
her mother had done! True she said very little, but that little was all
obstinate. She was quite unlike her usual self to his mother, too,
whose one thought was to comfort, and would not admit that there was
anything to be comforted about. And when that night he got into bed, and
drew her to his heart in the exquisite contact of the body that had
always till then soothed every trouble of the spirit, and she came
apparently willingly, and clung to him, and was his own dear wife as he
thought, and, happily sure of this, he whispered that he hoped she had
remembered to pray for her poor mother, it was a grievous shock to feel
her shrink away from him and hear her say she hadn’t--not more than
usual, not more than her childhood’s ‘God bless my mummy,’ and most
grievous to have her ask him, just as if they weren’t in bed but
downstairs conversing in their clothes, just as if they weren’t in the
sacred place and at the sacred moment never yet profaned by talk of
anything but love, why he really thought it so dreadful for her mother
to marry again.

‘Do you not see it is terrible to marry some one young enough to be your
son?’ he had asked sternly--he couldn’t have believed he would ever have
to be stern with his own love in such a place, at such an hour.

And she had answered: ‘But is it any more terrible than marrying some
one young enough to be your daughter?’

Virginia had answered that. His Virginia. In bed. In his very arms.




VI


Stephen was completely crushed by this. It was like the things children
say, unanswerable in its simple rightness, and yet, the grown-up world
being what it is, all wrong.

Virginia was nearer the fount of truth than he was. Where he stood,
thirty years further from it, its waters naturally were muddier; but
there they were, and had to be dealt with including their mud, and not
as if they remained for ever, as she so near the source supposed,
crystal clear.

On the other hand he couldn’t do without his wife. He owed her
everything, and above all he owed her his return to youth. She had come
and released him from the darkening prison of deepening middle age. He
worshipped her more than he knew. For instance, up to this he hadn’t
known he was wax in her hands, he had imagined he led, guided, was in
absolute authority; now suddenly he knew he was wax. When his
mother-in-law had dared compare his marriage with hers, the thing had
been the deadliest outrage. Virginia pointed her finger at it, and
instead of being outraged he was crushed--crushed by the truth as she
saw it, crushed by the knowledge that in her clear young eyes he hadn’t,
in his condemnation of her mother’s action, a leg to stand on.

Yet how many legs did Stephen not know he really had to stand on.
Everybody, except children like Virginia, inexperienced and new, would
agree that the difference between the two cases was such that one was
accepted as natural and the other with derision. But Virginia said there
was no difference--he had an uneasy feeling that Christ might have said
so too--and declared that if her mother’s marrying some one so much
younger was terrible, then her marrying Stephen was terrible; more
terrible, because there were actually eight years greater difference in
their case.

All this she said that first tragic night in bed, and inquired, when she
had finished, what was to be done about it.

He was wax. Not immediately; not for some black weeks of agonising
separation, of days spent avoiding each other, of nights spent with
their backs turned; but inevitably, before her stubbornness, he melted.
She had too many of the necessities of his life in her hands. To be out
of harmony with Virginia was worse, far worse--he shuddered as he
admitted it, but there it was--than being out of harmony with God.

And Virginia, though she kept up her stout exterior and went doggedly
through these painful days of April and May--the estrangement lasted all
that time--was most wretchedly unhappy. What was she to make of all
this? In her heart she was as much shocked as Stephen. But how could she
not stand up for and defend her mother? How could she deny her own
blood? Deeply she resented having to defend her mother; it shattered the
foundations of the whole of her childhood’s faith. Was there ever
anything more miserable, she thought, than to love some one and be
horrified at them at the same time? She who ought to have been putting
up her feet and resting more diligently than ever--‘The fifth month,
dear child,’ Mrs. Colquhoun anxiously reminded her, ‘we are in the fifth
month now, you know, and have to be most careful’--walked ceaselessly
instead in the garden, up and down, up and down, in all those paths
where she was least likely to be found by her mother-in-law, trying her
hardest to see clear, to think right, groping round for some way to get
back to Stephen while at the same time not deserting her mother, to get
back to his arms, to his heart, to the unclouded love without which she
felt she couldn’t live.

‘You know, Virginia dearest,’ said Mrs. Colquhoun at last, whose only
wish was to console and be confided in, and who was much upset by this
marked and morbid avoidance, ‘<i>you</i> have nothing to be ashamed of.’

‘Has anybody?’ Virginia asked, stopping short in the middle of the path
she had been waylaid in, and looking her mother-in-law squarely in the
eyes.

‘That wretched, wretched mother of hers,’ groaned Mrs. Colquhoun to
Stephen, describing this little scene to him and how uncomfortable and
hurt she had been by the poor child’s want of frankness. ‘What misery
she has brought on us all.’

‘Nevertheless,’ said Stephen, looking up wearily from the sermon he was
trying to write--his head, his heart, every part of him seemed to
ache--‘we must countenance her.’

‘Countenance? Countenance her? Do you mean behave as if we approved of
her?’

‘I do, mother. I have been thinking it over very seriously. Virginia’s
health, and with her health her child’s health, is at stake. She----’
his voice faltered, for he was most miserable--‘she weeps at night.
She--she weeps when she thinks I am asleep. If I try to console her
it--it becomes heartbreaking.’

He turned his face away and bent over the manuscript. Tears had come out
of his own eyes, and were wetting his face. Impossible for any one to
conceive the torments of his nights in bed with his beloved one and
estranged from her. That turning of backs, that cold space between their
two unhappy bodies....

‘Wretched, wretched woman,’ said Mrs. Colquhoun again, more bitterly
than ever, for she saw her son’s tears.

‘Yes. But we must think of Virginia.’

‘Has she been writing to her mother?’

‘I am sure she has not. She would do nothing without my knowledge.’

He dug the nib of his pen into the blotting-paper.

‘My wife is the soul of loyalty and straightness----’ he began, but his
voice quivering uncontrollably at the mention of her dear qualities, he
broke off.

‘Yes indeed, Stephen. Indeed I know it. She is the dearest child. Only
at these times a woman isn’t quite herself, and Virginia, I can see, has
got into a curious morbid state----’

‘I should leave her alone, mother,’ interrupted Stephen, his head bent
so that she couldn’t see his face.

Mrs. Colquhoun was hurt. All her affection and sympathy being thrown
back, as it were, at her,--told straight by her son, to whose welfare
she had devoted the whole of her life, that she was taking the wrong
line with Virginia. As though she didn’t know better than he could what
was the right line to take with some one in Virginia’s condition!

‘I think I was wrong about those letters,’ he said, continuing to jab
his pen into the blotting-paper. ‘I ought to have let her have them.’

‘I don’t at all agree with you. We did what we thought right, and more
than that no mortal can be expected to do.’

‘No doubt. But we were mistaken, perhaps, as to what was right.’

‘Nonsense, Stephen. The child is only nineteen. She has to be protected
from the influence of that woman. You caught the woman out yourself in
the most scandalous, the most disgraceful immorality, and now you
propose to countenance her and her--well, really there is only one word
for him--her paramour.’

‘They are married. They have expiated their sin.’

‘Her late paramour, then.’

‘For Virginia’s sake they must be countenanced.’

‘How?’ asked Mrs. Colquhoun, greatly exasperated. Here was her son every
bit as morbid as her daughter-in-law, and with no excuse of being in any
particular month.

‘I am going to ask Virginia to write and invite them to pay us a visit.’

‘Here?’

‘Where else?’

‘I shall go away.’

‘As you please.’

‘Stephen----’

‘Yes, mother?’

But without waiting to hear what she was going to say he went on: ‘I
have mismanaged this whole business. I have adopted a line with Virginia
which cannot be continued, for it makes her unhappy and ill. Except for
that night they spent together, which has now been expiated, what is
there after all in their marriage different from Virginia’s and mine?’

‘Stephen!’

‘The sexes are reversed; the ages are the same--or rather the balance is
on her side. She is eight years nearer his age than I am to Virginia’s.’

‘Stephen!’

‘It’s a mere prejudice, in any case.’

‘Stephen!’

‘My darling Virginia, so much closer to simple truth than I am,--so much
closer, indeed, to God--sees no difference.’

‘She says so to you, does she? I wager she does see a difference in her
heart, then. She is only standing up for that woman from some warped
idea of duty--standing up for her against her own husband, against the
father of her child.’

He made a gesture of weariness. He had suffered much. None but himself
knew what his nights had been.

‘I love Virginia,’ he said, as if to himself.

Mrs. Colquhoun stood staring at him. He did not look at her, but sat at
his table with bowed head. She had never before seen him like this,
broken down, his standards gone, giving in, winking at sin, prepared, as
he himself put it, to countenance it.

‘Stephen----’ she began.

He got up. ‘I think,’ he said, ‘I’ll go to Virginia now and put things
straight.’

‘You really intend to have those shocking people here and whitewash
them?’

He looked at her a moment in silence, bringing his attention back to
what she was saying.

‘You talk as if they were outbuildings, mother,’ he said, with a faint,
wretched smile.

‘Outbuildings! Sepulchres,’ said Mrs. Colquhoun. ‘Abodes of corruption.
And nothing you can do in the way of whitening them will hide--will
hide----’

She was becoming hysterical; in her life she had never been that. Words
were failing her; in her life they had never done that. She must grip on
to herself, she must shut her mouth tight. It frightened her, the
behaviour of her hitherto absolutely reliable body.

Her son went out of the room and left her standing there.




VII


It was the very morning after this that Stephen was late for breakfast
for the first time for years, and Virginia got down before him and found
a postcard in her mother’s handwriting among the letters, with a picture
on it of some place in the Isle of Wight and these words: <i>You have
helped me to happiness. Catherine Monckton.</i>

She stared at it puzzled. She was still more puzzled when, turning it
over again and looking at the address, she saw it was for Stephen, not
for her.

Stephen had helped her mother to happiness? It would be just like him,
of course--their reconciliation the night before had been utter and
wonderful--but how? What had he had to do with it? He who only now, only
yesterday, had come round to not disapproving any longer of the
marriage?

She was still holding the postcard in her hand, vainly trying to make
head or tail of it, when he came in.

‘It seems,’ she said, going to meet him with the quick steps and the
radiant smile of love that is very proud, ‘that I still don’t know all
your goodness, dear husband.’

‘What is it, my own wife?’ he asked, gazing at her upturned face with
the glad content of the readmitted into paradise.

‘Why, look----’ And she gave him the postcard.

He turned a deep red. She took that for modesty, and laughed with pride
in him. What he could have done and why he had done it she didn’t know,
but she loved him with a positively burning faith.

Stephen, reading the words on the postcard, deduced that the marriage,
which he had supposed had taken place a month or six weeks before, had
in fact only just done so, for he believed no lasting happiness could be
the lot of the ex-Mrs. Cumfrit, and gave her and her unfortunate victim
two or three days of it at most before remorse and disillusionment set
in. They were evidently at the very beginning of their two or three days
when the card was written. He had had no wish at all, he knew, to help
his mother-in-law to happiness. Expiation only was what he had had in
mind. That expiation should be a happiness-giving process had not
occurred to him as possible. And here was Virginia, praising and
blessing him; here was this young unsullied spirit once more making him,
by her belief and pride in his goodness, feel ashamed of himself. Also,
how awkward it was. Why could not Mrs. Cumfrit have announced she was
now Monckton in an ordinary manner, without dragging him into it?

‘Let us, my darling,’ he said, not knowing what to say and fervently
wishing he really had done something to deserve the look of proud
adoration on Virginia’s face, ‘have breakfast. Otherwise it will be
cold. And I am as hungry as a----’ he was going to say hunter, but it
sounded too unclerical, so he said rector instead; and they both
laughed, being in the mood, that happy morning, when one laughs at
anything.

She brought his coffee round to him, and stood behind his chair laying
her cheek on his head. ‘You’ve got to confess, you know,’ she said,
‘however much you want to hide your light under a bushel. What did you
do, Stephen darling, and why have we been so miserable all this time
about mother’s marrying, when it was really you who----?’

‘I’ll confess to you, my love, that I did enjoin marriage.’

‘You did? Then why----?’

‘Virginia, love, you trust your husband?’

‘Oh, Stephen--so <i>absolutely</i>!’ she cried, putting her arms round his
neck.

‘Then if I ask you not to question me further on this matter?’ he said,
stroking the hand round his neck and looking up at the face so near his
own.

‘Oh Stephen--ask me something harder than that. I do so long to show
what I would do for you. I do so long to be more like you----’

‘My darling, God forbid,’ said Stephen very earnestly.

‘Oh Stephen----’ was all Virginia could say to a modesty, a humility so
profound. She had married not only a lover but a saint.

Her cup was full. To be asked by Stephen not to question him ... she
went about as dumb as a mouse. To be asked by Stephen to believe in him
... she went about bursting with belief. And she was so happy, restored
to her husband after the black separation, that she didn’t even any
longer mind the idea of Christopher as a stepfather; and her happiness
spilt over into the letter she wrote her mother asking them both to
Chickover; and it was such a warm letter that Catherine, accustomed in
her relations with Virginia to provide all the warmth, was as much
puzzled as Virginia had been on reading the postcard to Stephen.

That Virginia, who rarely showed warmth, should show it now was really
very puzzling. But, being at the moment in the first astonishment at
the joy of falling in love, Catherine had no time for anything or any
one but Christopher, and didn’t think about Virginia’s letter for long.
She scribbled a little note--‘<i>Thank you, darling, for your letter. We
shall love to come some day</i>’--and forgot her. Nor did she remember her
again, or think of Chickover and Stephen and all that strange dim life,
till the Fanshawes’ visit.

On that visit almost everything the Fanshawes said seemed to produce a
climax. Their innocent questions were all, except one, very difficult to
answer, and their comments could mostly only be met by silence. The one
question that wasn’t difficult was, ‘Have you been to Chickover with him
yet?’--for the warm, forgotten invitation came back to Catherine’s mind
at these words; and though at the moment the Fanshawes hadn’t given her
time to answer, afterwards, before they left, when all the naturalness
and glow had gone out of their visit and everybody was elaborately
making conversation, she announced that Virginia had written urging them
to go down as soon as possible and stay a long while, and that they
thought of soon going.

At this Christopher had made a face at her, indicative of his amazement,
for it was the first he had heard of any such invitation or visit; and
Mrs. Fanshawe asked, ‘Have Virginia and Mr. Monckton already met?’--a
little timidly, for by this time she too felt that any question was
likely to turn out to be a bombshell.

‘Oh yes,’ said Catherine, reddening again, a vision of that meeting
flashing before her eyes--the Chickover drawing-room, herself coming in
ready to start for London and finding three figures in it, figures stiff
and silent as three hostile pokers.

Upon which the Fanshawes decided that there were things and people in
life they couldn’t understand, and gave up trying to. But their bosoms
were benevolent, and the only criticism they permitted themselves was
that Virginia, whom they didn’t know, must be a little unusual.




VIII


But what was to be done about Chickover?

When she saw herself in the glass in the mornings before dressing,
Catherine felt she had better not go. The exclamations of the Fanshawes
had confirmed her worst fears, and she knew for certain she was looking
worn out. How could she go down there with Christopher, looking worn
out? Virginia would notice it at once, and think she wasn’t happy and
blame Christopher. Stephen would notice it too, and be sure she wasn’t
happy, and triumph. While as for Mrs. Colquhoun----

She put Chickover out of her thoughts, and went and bought a lip-stick.
The Fanshawes were giving a dance that night, and had invited them, and
Christopher insisted on going. Useless for her to say she couldn’t
dance; he said she wouldn’t be able to help herself with him. It
appeared that he loved dancing, and only hadn’t danced much before his
marriage because, as he explained, he couldn’t stick the fool-girls one
met at dances. After all, it wasn’t possible to dance in absolutely
stony silence, and what to say to these girls positively beat him. If
one could have made love to them, now--Catherine winced--but one
couldn’t even do that, because then one would have got tangled up and
have to marry them. Marry them! Good God.

Now came this invitation, and he jumped at it, and all she could do was
to make the best of herself. So, as a first step, she went out and
bought a lip-stick; and such had been the innocence of her life in these
matters that she blushed when she asked for one. But she wasn’t pleased
with the effect, and, anxiously examining herself before Christopher
came in to dinner, was inclined to think it only made her look older and
certainly made her look less good.

He, however, noticed nothing, for by this time George’s electric lights
had been heavily shaded, and he kissed her with his usual delight at
getting back to her, and the stuff all came off, and she wondered what
other women did to keep it on, or whether one either had a lip-stick or
a lover, but never both.

She didn’t enjoy the dance. He couldn’t make her dance, however much he
tried and she tried; and after struggling round the room with her and
treading lamentably on each other’s toes, he gave up and let her sit
down. But it wasn’t possible for him, hearing that throbbing music, not
to dance, and Catherine, looking on at him going round with one girl
after the other, all of whom seemed miracles of youth and prettiness,
didn’t enjoy herself.

The girls appeared to languish at him. No wonder. He was far the most
attractive young man there, she thought with an ache both of pride and
pain. She didn’t enjoy herself at all.

The Fanshawes were very kind--almost too kind, as though they were eager
to hide the facts of her own situation from her--and kept on bringing up
elderly men who weren’t dancing and introducing them. But the elderly
men thought the small lady with the wandering eyes and inattentive ears
and reddened mouth rather tiresome, and soon melted away; besides, they
preferred girls. So that whenever the Fanshawes looked her way they saw
her, in spite of their efforts, sitting alone.

At last, after Ned Fanshawe had sat with her a long time, his mother
came up with an elderly woman instead of an elderly man, and introduced
her, and she did stick. Like Catherine, she appeared to know nobody
there. They sat together the rest of the evening.

‘That’s my daughter,’ said the elderly woman, pointing out a very pretty
girl dancing at that moment with Christopher. ‘Which is yours?’

No, Catherine didn’t enjoy herself.

For the life of her she couldn’t help being rather quiet in the taxi
going home. Christopher had seemed to enjoy himself so much. All those
girls....

‘I loved that,’ he said, lighting a cigarette, and then drawing her to
him.

‘I thought you said you were bored by girls.’

‘Not if you’re there too. It makes all the difference.’

‘But I wasn’t much good to you.’

‘Why, just to know you were there, with me, in the room, made me happy.’

‘Do I make a good background?’ she asked, trying to sound amused.

He threw away his cigarette and took her in his arms. ‘Darling, were you
horribly fed up, sitting there? I tell you what--we’ll get a gramophone,
and I’ll teach you to dance. You’ll learn in no time, and then we’ll
dance together at these shows every night.’

‘Wouldn’t I be <i>tired</i>,’ said Catherine, making an effort to laugh; and,
instead of laughing, crying.

Crying. The worst thing possible for her eyes. She would be a real,
unmistakable hag in the morning.

‘Why, what is it, my precious little thing?’ exclaimed Christopher,
feeling her face suddenly wet, and greatly surprised and distressed.

‘It’s nothing--I’m just tired,’ she said, hurriedly wiping her eyes and
determined no more tears should screw themselves out.

‘I was a selfish idiot not to think how bored you must be,’ he said,
anxiously kissing and loving her. ‘I saw you talking to Fanshawe, and
thought you looked quite happy----’

‘Oh yes--so I was.’

‘Catherine--little thing----’

He kissed her again and again, and she kissed him back, and managed to
laugh.

‘Darling Chris,’ she said, nestling close, ‘I don’t believe I’m any good
at dances.’

‘You will be when I’ve taught you. You’ll dance like a little angel.
We’ll get a gramophone to-morrow.’

‘Oh no--don’t get a gramophone. Please, Chris darling. I can’t learn to
dance. I don’t want to. I’m sure I never could. You must go to dances
without me.’

‘Without you! I like that. As though I’d ever go to anything, or budge
an inch, without you.’

At this time they had been married five weeks.

There came another letter from Virginia; not quite so warm, because
nobody can keep at the same temperature uninterruptedly for weeks, but
still continuing to invite.

‘<i>We hope you and Mr. Monckton are soon coming here, dearest mother</i>,’
she wrote in her round, childish handwriting. ‘<i>I have to lie up most of
the time now, because I’ve begun the seventh month, and mother says that
that is the one to be most careful in, so that if you were to come now
we could have some nice quiet talks. Stephen is visiting in the parish,
but I think if he were here he would ask me to give you his love.</i>’

How far away it sounded. Another life, dim and misty. Stephen had
evidently told her nothing of his monstrous suspicions. Virginia was
prepared, dutifully as always, to accept her mother’s new husband. She
had disliked him very obviously that day at Chickover, but now she was
going to do her duty by him, just as she did her duty by everybody who
had a claim on it.

Catherine sighed, holding the letter in her hand. It seemed like the
splashing of cool water, a distant, quiet freshness, compared to her
fevered, strange, rapturous--but was it really rapturous?--life now.

An ache of longing to see Virginia stole into her heart. One’s children
and new husbands--how difficult they were to mix comfortably. Mothers,
to be completely satisfactory, must be ready for sacrifice, and more
sacrifice, and nothing but sacrifice. They mustn’t want any happiness
but happiness through, by, and with their children. They must make no
attempt to be individuals, to be separate human beings, but only
mothers.

She sat staring at herself in the glass, thinking. When the letter
arrived she was at her dressing-table, going through the now long and
difficult process of doing her face. Mrs. Mitcham had brought the post
in on tiptoe--she always now approached Catherine on tiptoe--laid it on
the table, and stolen out again quickly, neither looking to the right
hand nor the left, for by this time experience had taught her that if
she did look what she saw was likely to be upsetting.

Catherine paused in what she was doing to open the letter, and then sat
idly twisting it round her finger. She had been told of a woman in
Sackville Street by Kitty Fanshawe who ‘did’ faces, and had gone at once
and had hers done, and had been enchanted by the result. No more
elementary lip-sticks and powder for her. In this elegant retreat, at
the back of the building away from all noise, soothing to the nerves
merely to go into, she had lain back in a deep delicious chair, and an
exquisite young woman, whose own face was a convincing proof of the
excellence of the treatment, did things with creams and oils and soft
finger-tips; and when at the end--it was so soothing that Catherine went
to sleep--a hand-glass was given her and she was told to look, she
couldn’t help an exclamation of pleasure.

Well; this was a miracle. She not only looked ten, fifteen years younger
and really, really pretty, but she looked so very fashionable. A little
adventurous, perhaps, the last vestiges of the quiet country lady that
still had survived the rubbings-off of Christopher all gone, but
how--well, how <i>pretty</i>.

The only thing left to do was to go at once and buy a hat worthy of so
distinguished a complexion. She went straight to Bond Street, and on the
short walk discovered that people looked at her, saw her, instead of her
being, as she had lately been, so completely uninteresting that it made
her practically invisible.

Both the hat and the treatment were expensive,--the treatment more so,
because it didn’t last, and the hat at least for a little while did.
Impossible to have the treatment more often than very occasionally, as
it cost so much, and she accordingly bought a box containing everything
belonging to it except the young woman’s finger-tips, and tried to give
it to herself at home.

The results were rather unfortunate. She didn’t look like anybody in the
very least good. Mrs. Mitcham was secretly much worried. But she
persisted, hoping by practice to become clever at it; and it was while
she was in the middle of her daily struggles one morning, that
Virginia’s second letter arrived.

What was to be done about Chickover? How could she go there with
Christopher? Though he swore he would never go near the accursèd spot
again, she knew he would if she asked him to. But how painful, how
impossible it would be. Stephen was holding out olive-branches, for of
course Virginia would never have invited them without his approval; but
Stephen’s olive-branches were unpleasant things, she thought,
remembering him as she had seen him last, on the day of his horrible
accusations. To have met him last like that, and then find him on the
doorstep being the pleasant host to Christopher! And Virginia, kept
ignorant of everything except the fact of the marriage, bravely trying
to do her duty all round, and Mrs. Colquhoun profoundly hostile and
disapproving--why should her beloved Chris be exposed to such ordeals?

No, he shouldn’t be. But how could she go without him? Such were her
feelings for Christopher that the thought of being separated from him
even for the shortest possible visit was unbearable to her. Yet how not
go? Enmeshed though she was in her obsession, the natural longing of her
blood to see Virginia again yet tugged at her heart. If she could see
Virginia without the others! But that, she knew, was impossible.

Presently, when she had finished dressing, she went into the
drawing-room and looked up trains. Suppose she went on a Monday, and
came back on the Wednesday in time for dinner? No; she couldn’t endure
being away so long from Christopher. One night would be quite enough for
Chickover; there would be the whole afternoon and evening to talk in.
No; she couldn’t endure that either. What mightn’t happen to him while
she was away? The whole time her heart would be in her mouth. Why not do
it in a day? Go the first thing, and come back the last thing?

She looked up trains again. Chickover was so very far away; it took
hours to get there. But by leaving Waterloo soon after eight in the
morning she could be there by twelve, and the last train from there at
seven-twenty would get her back by midnight.

Yes; she would do that. No, she wouldn’t. There was another train at
eleven something, getting down at three. It was most important she
should look well and happy, and show those doubters and disapprovers
what a success her marriage was. She who was so well and happy--surely
there couldn’t be anybody in the world <i>more</i> well and happy, except for
sometimes being rather tired, which was nothing at all--must look it;
and if she had lines and hollows in her face the three would at once
jump to every sort of conclusion. The eleven o’clock train would give
her time to go to Maria Rome, the Sackville Street lady, for face
treatment first. There would still be four solid hours at Chickover. It
made the whole thing very expensive, of course, but it was well worth
it; for when they saw her so fresh and smooth they couldn’t but feel
that it was merely silly to think her marriage had been a mistake, or to
insist on measuring age and behaviour by years instead of by appearance.
How intensely she wanted to prove her happiness, to triumph in
Christopher!

She wrote to Virginia and told her she was coming down alone for the
afternoon the following Monday, just to be with her a little by herself;
Virginia wouldn’t want to see anybody she didn’t yet know very well in
her present state, and she and Christopher--she wrote of him as
Christopher, for all other ways of describing him were, she felt,
absurd--would come down together later on, after the baby was born and
Virginia was up and about again.

Then, at dinner, she told Christopher what she was going to do.

He didn’t like it. He hated the idea of her not being back till so late.
She was far too precious and tiny to go racketing off alone. What
mightn’t happen to her? He wouldn’t be able to do a stroke of work all
Monday for thinking of her. In fact, he took the news exactly in the way
Catherine would have wished him to, and she loved him, if possible, more
than ever. Naturally at the same time he made some extremely
disrespectful comments on Stephen’s personal appearance and general
character, though, as the old boy had been the means of making Catherine
marry him, he couldn’t help, he pointed out, liking him in spite of his
various and glaring defects; and as for Virginia, his opinion of that
girl was what it had always been, but he admitted that a mother might
probably see something in her, and that if Catherine felt herself
irresistibly impelled to go down and visit her, he supposed she had
better go and get it over.

‘She’s going to have a----’ began Catherine, but stopped. Really, she
couldn’t bring herself to tell him. She would have to sometime, but why
before it was absolutely necessary? Virginia’s baby would make her a
grandmother. Christopher would be married to a grandmother. If he hadn’t
up to now felt the difference in their ages this must inevitably wake
him up to it. To think of it made her feel raw, as if her skin had been
pulled off, and she left exposed, shrinking in an agonised apprehension
and sensitiveness.... Love, love--if only she didn’t love him so
much....

‘What is she going to have?’ he asked, as she stopped short, looking up
from the strawberries he was eating.

‘A happy afternoon, I hope,’ said Catherine quickly, turning red and
smiling nervously.

‘I should think so indeed--with you there,’ said Christopher. And added
under his breath, so that Catherine couldn’t hear and have her darling
little maternal affections hurt, ‘Young blighter.’




IX


On the Monday, then, a pretty little lady of about thirty to
thirty-five, whose prettiness was of the kind that is mostly disapproved
of in country places, got out of the train at Chickover, and was met by
an embarrassed clergyman.

The corners of her mouth were turned up in pleased smiles--it was so
exciting and delightful to know one was looking really nice again--as
she trotted along the platform to where he stood hesitating. She was,
besides being very glad she looked nice, very glad to be going to see
Virginia and very glad to be going back to Christopher that evening.
Also, upheld by the knowledge of her attractiveness, the journey hadn’t
tired her; on the contrary, it had been amusing, with an eagerly
friendly strange man in the carriage, concerned in every way for her
comfort. Added to which, the day being hot, she was flushed through the
fainter flush bestowed on her by Sackville Street, and this was always
becoming to her. And, finally, her eyes were bright with the gaiety that
takes hold of a woman after even a small success. So that, altogether,
it was natural she should smile.

Stephen had been prepared for anything rather than this. He had nerved
himself to a quite different encounter,--certainly not to smiles.
Bygones were to be bygones; his recent sacred experiences with Virginia
had made him ardently determined to strive after the goodness she
believed was his already, and his mother-in-law was to be received back
with as much of the old respect for her as could possibly be scraped
together. He would keep her before his mind as she used to be, and not
dwell on that which she had since become. Besides, though she might have
been happy when she wrote the postcard that had so unexpectedly
intensified his own happiness, she couldn’t, he opined, be happy now. It
was eight weeks ago that she wrote the card. Much, in marriage, may
happen in eight weeks. Eight days was sometimes enough, so he
understood, to open the eyes of the married. And here she was smiling.

‘How do you do,’ he said, grabbing at his soft hat with one hand and
nervelessly shaking her hand with the other.

‘How very nice of you to come and meet me,’ she said gaily. Funny old
Stephen. One couldn’t really be angry with him. And he was really very
good. He looked extremely old, though, after having had Christopher
before one’s eyes.

‘Not at all,’ said Stephen.

‘How is Virginia?’

‘Well.’

‘I’m so glad. I’m longing to see her. Oh, how do you do, Smithers. How
are the children? I’m so glad----’

People were staring at her. It had not yet been his lot to be in the
company of a lady people stared at. He hurried her into the car. He
tried hard to respect her.

There wasn’t much time between the station and the house for respect,
but he did try. He had thought to clear the ground for it by reassuring
her during the brief drive as to Virginia’s ignorance of the reasons
that had led to her marriage. ‘Led to’ was how he had intended to put
it, rejecting the harsher and more exact word necessitated, for he was
anxious to be as forgiving and delicate as possible, now that everybody
concerned had turned the lamentable page. Besides, who was he to judge?
Christ hadn’t judged the other woman taken in adultery.

Delicacy, however, was as difficult as respect. She herself seemed
totally without it. Also it was difficult to feel she was his
mother-in-law at all. She was curiously altered. He couldn’t make out in
what the alteration consisted. Manifestly she was aping youth, but she
was aping it, he admitted, so cleverly that if he hadn’t known her he
might certainly, at a casual glance, have taken her for a daughter
rather than a mother, though not the sort of daughter one would wish to
have.

The moment they were seated in the car she herself threw delicacy to the
winds. ‘You know, Stephen,’ she said taking his hand--he didn’t know
whether to withdraw it or behave as if he hadn’t noticed--‘good does
come in the strangest way out of evil.’

‘I am not prepared to admit that,’ Stephen felt bound to reply.

‘Oh do let’s be real friends, won’t we?’ she said, still smiling at him
and looking like somebody’s slightly undesirable daughter. ‘Then we can
<i>really</i> talk. I wanted to thank you for my great happiness----’

He tried to withdraw his hand. ‘I think perhaps----’ he began.

‘No, no--listen,’ she went on, holding it tighter. ‘If it hadn’t been
for you I never would have married Christopher and never would have had
an idea of what happiness is really like. So you see, your thinking
those wicked things of us was what brought it all about. Just like
roses, coming up and flowering divinely out of mud.’

He had made the most serious resolutions to let bygones be bygones, and
he shut his mouth in a thin tight line lest he should be unable not to
say something Virginia would be sorry for. That his mother-in-law, who
was once so dovelike, so becoming of speech and discreet of behaviour,
should suddenly slough the decencies and allude in highly distasteful
images to occurrences he was doing his utmost to forget and forgive,
that she should use, herself having been wicked, the word wicked in
connection with any thoughts of his was surely outrageous.

Yet even while he locked his mouth he remembered that it was his
mother-in-law’s postcard that had renewed and made more radiant his
Virginia’s belief in him. The service this regrettable mother-in-law had
done him was great and undeniable. She had in the past, and consciously,
done him very great service, and he had been grateful. She had eight
weeks ago done him another. Should he, because the last service had been
accidental and unconscious, not repay her? Twice over now she had helped
him to his wife. The side of him that judged, disapproved, suspected,
that was his early training and all the long years before Virginia, made
him not able to unlock his mouth; the side of him that didn’t and
wasn’t, that longed to justify Virginia’s belief in him, made him try
extraordinarily hard to unlock it. He did earnestly now desire to let
mercy prevail over justice; but, when he looked at Catherine, how hard
it was. This blooming gaiety--he used the adjective correctly, not as
Christopher would have used it--upset his plans. He had not been
prepared for it. She was not like the same person.

He sat silent, struggling within himself, and they arrived at the house
holding each other’s hands for the simple reason that he couldn’t get
his away.

There on the steps stood Virginia, as if she had never stood anywhere
else since Catherine left her on them the day she departed in
Christopher’s side-car on the momentous journey that had changed her
life; only this time Mrs. Colquhoun wasn’t standing there with her, and
Virginia had grown considerably rounder.

‘Sweet of you to come, mother,’ she said, shy and flushed, when
Catherine had run up to her and was folding as much of her as she could
in her arms.

It had not escaped Virginia that her mother and Stephen had arrived hand
in hand. She gave him a look of deep and tender gratitude when he, too,
came up the steps. He wiped his forehead. He seemed to be in a constant
condition of rousing Virginia’s gratitude for things he hadn’t done.
Really, he thought, following the two into the house, he was a worm; a
worm decked, by his darling wife’s belief, in the bright adornments of a
saint.

Virginia was much struck by her mother’s appearance. She didn’t remember
her as so pretty. She felt oddly elderly, with her awkward heavy body,
and certainly she felt completely plain beside her. Her mother looked a
little fashionable perhaps, for quiet Chickover, yet why she should
Virginia didn’t know, for she had on the same country clothes she was
wearing on her last visit and the visit before that. Her complexion was
beautiful. Virginia was quite glad Mrs. Colquhoun had had to go away
for the day on business and wouldn’t be there to see it. She felt--she
didn’t know, for Mrs. Colquhoun had never mentioned such things, but she
felt--that her mother-in-law thought women oughtn’t to have complexions
once they were--well, older.

Lunch passed off well; the talk afterwards, which included Stephen who,
anxious to be good and kind, remained with them and conversed to the
very best of his ability, passed off well; tea passed off well; and
after tea he purposely withdrew from the terrace, where they were
sitting, so as to allow mother and daughter freedom to touch on matters
of intimate feminine interest.

Then Virginia, after making her mother lie down on a long cane seat near
hers, so as to rest before the journey home, screwed herself up to
mentioning the marriage--it hadn’t yet been in any way alluded to--and
said shyly, turning red as she spoke, ‘You know, mother, I’m really very
glad about Mr.--Mr.----’

‘No, not Mr. anything, darling. Call him Christopher.’

‘Sweet of you, mother,’ said Virginia, looking so much relieved that
Catherine said, ‘What is, dearest?’

Virginia turned yet redder. ‘I was afraid,’ she said, ‘you might want me
to call him father.’

‘Oh <i>no</i>, darling,’ said Catherine, laughing nervously. ‘You couldn’t
possibly.’

And taking Virginia’s hand and stroking it, looking down at it as she
stroked, she said, ‘You don’t--you don’t think him too--too young, do
you dearest?’

‘No,’ said Virginia stoutly.

‘Darling!’ exclaimed Catherine, raising the hand she was stroking and
swiftly kissing it.

‘How can I, when Stephen and I----’

Dear, dear little Virginia. Catherine was so much pleased and touched
that she kissed Virginia’s hand over and over again. ‘My darling little
daughter,’ she said, ‘my own darling little daughter----’ and added,
and really at the moment believed it, forgetting how completely she had
been absorbed only in Christopher, ‘I have missed you so.’

Virginia at once retreated into her shell. Instinctively she felt the
lapse from truth. ‘Sweet of you, mother,’ she said in her usual awkward
little way.

She drew her hand back. It was strange, and not quite right somehow, for
her mother to be kissing it like that. It made her feel uncomfortable.

‘Wouldn’t you,’ she suggested, so as to turn the talk to practical
matters, ‘like to wash your face, mother?’

‘Wash my face?’ echoed Catherine, startled and staring at her. ‘Why?’

‘I always find cold water such a help,’ said Virginia, ‘if one is rather
tired.’

Catherine dropped back again on to her cushions. ‘Darling child,’ she
murmured, closing her eyes a minute. Cold water--on the top of the
delicate structure of Sackville Street----

No, she wouldn’t wash her face; she was quite comfortable, and not a bit
tired, and was so very, very happy to be with her little Virginia.

Virginia got further into her shell. There was a something about her
mother that she wasn’t accustomed to. She had always been a loving
mother, but not quite--not exuberant like this. Something had gone. Was
it--Virginia searched laboriously round in her scrupulous mind--dignity?

‘I mustn’t miss my train,’ said Catherine, when the church clock struck
half-past six.

‘There’s half an hour still,’ said Virginia. ‘If you leave at seven it
will be quite soon enough.’

‘It’s the last train,’ said Catherine. ‘Hadn’t the car better come round
a little before seven?’

‘If you missed it, mother, it wouldn’t matter. I could lend you
everything, and Stephen and I would be very glad.’

‘Darling,’ murmured Catherine again, concealing a shudder. She pictured
herself after the unavoidable washing, coming down next morning to
breakfast....

At a quarter to seven Stephen thought it proper to appear once more and
converse during the few remaining moments of his mother-in-law’s visit.
He had decided he would pick and offer her a bunch of roses to take home
with her; if he wasn’t able to respond to hand-holding, if he wasn’t
able, after all, to respect her, he could at least offer her roses.
Virginia would be pleased, and his own conscience slightly soothed.

Catherine began putting on her gloves.

‘Plenty of time,’ said Stephen, seeing this. ‘It has occurred to me,’ he
continued, ‘that you might like a few roses.’

‘How very nice of you, Stephen,’ said Catherine, who had planted every
one of the roses with her own hands,--‘but isn’t it too late?’

‘Plenty of time. Smithers is most trustworthy about trains. I will
gather them myself.’

And he went indoors to get a knife and a basket.

‘I’m sure I ought to go,’ said Catherine nervously to Virginia.

‘The car isn’t round yet, mother. Smithers is never late.’

‘I believe,’ said Stephen, coming out again, knife and basket in hand,
pausing on the terrace and considering the sky, ‘you will have a
comparatively cool journey back. I rather fancy there has been a
thunderstorm over towards Salisbury, and it will have cleared the air
when you arrive there.’

He went down the steps on to the lawn, and began choosing roses with
care and deliberation.

‘Virginia darling, oughtn’t I to go?’ Catherine asked, fidgeting.

‘It isn’t seven yet, mother,’ said Virginia patiently, a little hurt by
this extreme anxiety not to be obliged to spend the night with them.
Stephen on the lawn was carefully removing the thorns from the roses he
had cut.

The church clock began to strike seven. Catherine started. ‘There,’ she
exclaimed, getting up quickly, ‘I <i>must</i> go. Good-bye, darling. Never
mind the roses, Stephen,’ she called.

‘You have at least another five minutes before you need leave,’ he
called back in his sonorous, carrying voice, still going on selecting
the biggest blooms.

Kate appeared and said the car was waiting.

Catherine hurriedly bent down and kissed Virginia. ‘Good-bye,
darling--I’ll go at once. I’m sure I ought to. Don’t get up--you look so
comfy. It has been such a joy seeing you again. Stephen, I’m going--I
shall miss the train----’

‘Of course I’ll get up, mother, and see you off,’ said Virginia,
disengaging herself with difficulty from the rugs and cushions everybody
was always now burying her in. ‘Stephen,’ she called, ‘mother won’t
wait.’

Stephen hastily cut one more rose, a particularly fine one, and hurried,
infected by Catherine’s hurry, towards the terrace, stripping off the
thorns as he came. His eyes being fixed on the thorns he was stripping
off he didn’t see he had reached the steps of the terrace, and he
stumbled and fell up them, scattering the roses at Virginia’s feet.

He wasn’t in the least hurt, and indeed was on his legs immediately
again; but Virginia, who had stared at his prostrate form a moment in
silence, her hand pressed to her heart, made a queer little sound and
fainted.

Both Catherine and Stephen rushed to her. By the time help had been
called, and they had lifted her and carried her indoors and laid her on
a sofa, Catherine had missed her train.




X


In this way it happened that she stayed the night after all, and came
down next morning looking quite different. She had breakfasted in her
room, had lingered in it till the last moment, but finally was obliged
to face her relations; and they were startled.

There was neither bloom nor gaiety now. The one had vanished with the
other. Virginia thought her mother must have had far more of a shock the
evening before than had been supposed. The fainting had been
nothing,--when one was going to have a baby one did things like that,
and they were of no consequence. She had soon recovered, and they had
all three spent, Virginia thought, a very nice quiet evening afterwards,
Stephen himself going to give the orders for her mother’s room to be got
ready, and expressing the most hospitable satisfaction at her further
stay. Her mother had been a little silent, that was all; and it hadn’t
occurred to Virginia, who so soon was herself again, that she really had
had a shock.

‘Why, mother----’ she exclaimed, when Catherine came down into the
hall, ready to start.

‘I didn’t sleep,’ said Catherine, turning away her face and pretending
to search for an umbrella she hadn’t brought.

They stared at her. What a difference. Virginia was concerned. Her poor
little mother must really have been thoroughly frightened by her
fainting.

‘But mother----’ she began, taking a step towards her, wanting to say
something to reassure and comfort.

‘Oh, it’s nothing,’ said Catherine, bending over the umbrella-stand.

She was a bundle of nerves and acute sensitiveness. She felt she
couldn’t bear to be touched. And why didn’t they see that to stand there
staring....

She pulled the umbrellas in the stand about with shaking fingers,
putting off the moment of turning round to say good-bye.

It wasn’t only that she had had to wash off Maria Rome and hadn’t
slept--and indeed she hadn’t slept a wink--it was also that in the
watches of the night, of this her first night alone since her marriage,
once more in that house of long calm memories, she had seen, as she
stared into the darkness and thought of the inevitable next morning and
its humiliations, that she was on the high road to becoming a fool. Yes,
a fool; a silly fool; the sort of fool she had herself smiled at when
she was younger, the worst sort of fool, the elderly fool.

But how could she stop? Sitting up in bed she asked herself this
question. She must keep up somehow with Christopher’s youth. She
couldn’t let herself crumble into age before his eyes. If only he hadn’t
begun by admiring her physically so much! If only his love hadn’t been
based on what, adoring her, he called her exquisiteness. How difficult
it is, thought Catherine, wide awake hour after hour, to go on being
exquisite when one doesn’t sleep enough, and is tormented by fear of
one’s lover, on whom one’s entire happiness depends, suddenly seeing one
isn’t exquisite at all, but old, old. It was like being forced to run a
race that was quite beyond one’s strength, and from the beginning being
out of breath. And next morning--she knew that separated from Sackville
Street and out of reach of Maria Rome’s box she not only looked her age
but much, much more now than her age, and Stephen and Virginia would be
convinced the marriage was a bitter failure and punishment, and that
Christopher was unkind to her. Christopher unkind to her!
Christopher....

She spent an extremely unpleasant night. The house, its memories, the
prospect of next morning, forced her to think. Oh, it was unfair, unfair
and most cruel, that at last she should have been given love only when
she was too old. She ought of course never to have listened to him, to
have turned the sternest, deafest ear. But--one is vain; vanity had been
the beginning of it, the irresistibleness of the delicious flattery of
being mistaken for young, and before she knew what she was doing she had
fallen in love,--fallen flop in love, like any idiot schoolgirl. And
Christopher who didn’t realise, who hadn’t noticed yet, who loved her as
if she were a girl, and by the very excess of his love burnt up what
still had been left to her of youth.... Yes, she was a fool; but how
stop, how stop? It was horrible to be ashamed, and yet to have to go on
repeating the conduct that made one ashamed. Love--if only, only she
didn’t love!

She spent an extremely unpleasant night. No wonder she came down looking
different. It wasn’t just having had to wash away Maria Rome.

And then, while she was fumbling among the umbrellas, and Virginia was
watching her in puzzled concern, and Stephen was endeavouring to
identify the mother-in-law who had gone upstairs with the mother-in-law
who had come down again, Mrs. Colquhoun came in through the drawing-room
windows, arrived thus early across the park and garden to inquire how
Virginia was after her mother’s visit of the day before, and to gather
from Stephen what she could of his state of mind after so searching an
experience.

The situation was as awkward as it was unexpected. Stephen and Virginia
hadn’t thought she would come so early, or they would have sent round
and warned. They could only look on and hope for the best. His mother,
Stephen was aware, had decided that she, anyhow, was not obliged to
continue to know the late Mrs. Cumfrit. If and when Mrs. Cumfrit came
down to Chickover, his mother had informed him, she herself would always
have urgent business somewhere else. Morals were, without any doubt
whatever, morals, she had said, and if Stephen could reconcile his
principles with leniency in regard to them, she herself neither could
nor would.

It was therefore most unpleasant for every one that she should walk
straight into Catherine’s presence. Virginia and Stephen held their
breath. Mrs. Colquhoun gave a visible start when she saw the figure
bending over the umbrella-stand, and made as if she would go back at
once into the drawing-room from whence she had emerged. But when on
Catherine’s turning round she saw her face, she was instantly placated.
What a change. Judgment had indeed been swift. Here was nothing but a
wreck. ‘He beats her,’ was Mrs. Colquhoun’s immediate mental comment.
After all, she thought, one could leave these matters quite safely in
the hands of God.

It had not been her intention ever to speak to Catherine again, but a
wreck is different; one could not but feel benevolent towards a wreck.
If only people would be and stay wrecks Mrs. Colquhoun would always have
been benevolent. She put out her hand. She said quite politely, ‘How do
you do.’ Stephen thought, ‘My mother is a good woman’; Virginia gave a
sigh of relief; and all Catherine had to do was to reply with equal
politeness, ‘How do you do.’

But she was in a highly abnormal condition. She was a mass of nerves and
quivering intuitions. Caught, unprotected in the morning light, there
she was standing exposed before these staring relations, unable to hide,
obliged to show herself; and, with a feeling that nothing now mattered,
she was overtaken by the reckless simplicity of the cornered. Through
Mrs. Colquhoun’s greeting she felt the truth: Mrs. Colquhoun was being
amiable because she thought Catherine was down and out, and Mrs.
Colquhoun was what she was, hard, severe, critical, grudging of
happiness, kind to failure so long as it remained failure, simply
because there wasn’t a soul in the whole world who really loved her. A
devoted husband would have done much to bring out her original goodness;
a very devoted husband would have done everything.

And so, to her own astonishment, and to the frozen amazement of the
others, instead of in her turn nicely murmuring, ‘How do you do,’ and
smiling and going out to the car, she was impelled by what she saw in
Mrs. Colquhoun’s eyes as she took her extended hand, to say, ‘You need
love.’

What made her? It was the last thing she would really ever have said out
loud to Mrs. Colquhoun if she had been in her senses, so that she
couldn’t have been in her senses. Nobody in the least knew what she
meant. It sounded improper; it was most startling.

Mrs. Colquhoun withdrew the hand she ought never to have given, and
Stephen said in a strained voice, ‘We all need that,’ and added with
emphasis that it was high time to start unless the train was to be
missed again.

Virginia could only kiss her mother a worried and bewildered good-bye.
Fancy saying that to her mother-in-law. What could her mother have
meant? Of course it was true of everybody that they needed love, but one
didn’t say so.

Mrs. Colquhoun took it, she considered, very well. Turning away out of
the hall she waited in the drawing-room till the car had gone, and then
when Virginia came in begged her not to give it another thought.

‘Give what another thought?’ Virginia asked, at once bristling, as she
had lately so often bristled when with Mrs. Colquhoun, at the merest
insinuation that her mother needed either explaining or excusing.

Well, well. Poor little Virginia. One had to be very patient with her
just now.




XI


Christopher dined with Lewes the evening Catherine was at Chickover, and
stayed with him till it was time to go to Waterloo to meet her train. He
thoroughly enjoyed being with old Lucy again, and listening to his yarns
about the imminent economic collapse of Europe. He had forgotten how
interesting economics and Europe were. There were other important things
in the world besides love, and it was a refreshment to get among them
again for a bit.

They dined at the restaurant they used most often to go to when they
lived together, and afterwards went back to Lewes’s rooms and sat in
great contentment with the two windows wide open to the summer night,
each in his own comfortable old chair, each with his feet on the sill of
a window, smoking and talking, while the pleasant London summer evening
street sounds floated up into the room, and the dusk deepened in the
corners.

Next door was the room Christopher used to rage up and down. He laughed
to think how calm and happy he now was. No more ragings up and down for
him. Marriage set one free from all that sort of torment. Old Lucy ought
to marry. Not that he seemed tormented in any way, but Christopher would
have liked him to know for himself what a delight life could be. The
poor chap hadn’t the beginning of the foggiest suspicion of it.

Lewes was very glad to see his friend looking so well and happy.
Evidently the marriage was still a success. He found it impossible to
believe that it would be lastingly successful. True, the lady on her
wedding-day had seemed much younger than her years; but there were the
years,--he had himself seen them in black and white on the certificate,
and they were bound sooner or later to gallop on faster and faster ahead
of Christopher’s. However, few marriages, he understood, were lasting
successes, so that perhaps after all it didn’t much matter.

The two therefore were in great harmony, each much pleased to be once
more with the other.

‘She’s gone down for the day to her daughter,’ Christopher said, when
Lewes, observing the laws of politeness, inquired after Catherine.

‘She has a daughter?’ asked Lewes surprised, for he had never heard of
her.

‘Certainly,’ said Christopher, as who should say, ‘Hasn’t everybody?’

Lewes made no comment. He silently considered this further drawback to
the marriage. And Christopher, happy and expansive, continued: ‘She has
married a man years older than herself.’

‘Who has?’ inquired Lewes, not quite following.

‘Well, Catherine hasn’t, has she.’

‘No. I’m obtuse. Forgive me. I think I was surprised your wife should
have a daughter grown up enough to marry.’

‘It is absurd, isn’t it,’ said Christopher, liking Lewes for this.
‘She’s much too young, isn’t she. He’s a parson, and old enough to be
her father.’

‘Whose father?’ asked Lewes, again not quite following.

‘His wife’s, of course. The girl’s only a girl, and he’s a horny-beaked
old rooster.’

‘Is he?’ said Lewes, and thought things. Not that he, or, he admitted,
anybody, could possibly have applied such epithets to Chris’s wife, but
still.... And had his friend considered that he was now the
stepfather-in-law of a person he described as a horny-beaked old
rooster?

‘Why, he’s old enough to be Catherine’s father too,’ said Christopher.

‘Is he?’ said Lewes, reflecting how that could be. Wouldn’t that make
him old enough, then, to be his wife’s grandfather? Well, best let it
alone. It was a perplexing mix-up.

‘I call it disgusting,’ said Christopher.

Lewes was silent. Long ago he had observed how people are most critical
in others of that which they do and are themselves. When he spoke again
it was to return to the exposition and illustration of the doctrines of
Mr. Keynes, from which he had so injudiciously wandered.

‘Come with me to the station,’ said Christopher, getting up at half-past
eleven and preparing to go and meet Catherine at Waterloo.

‘I think not,’ said Lewes.

‘Come on. It’ll do you good. You’ll see Catherine again. It’s time you
did. And we’ll arrange with her when you’re to come to dinner.’

Lewes didn’t want in the least to see Catherine again, or be done good
to, or go to dinner, but Christopher was determined, and he gave in and
went; which was just as well, for when everybody had got out of the
train and the platform was empty and it was clear she hadn’t come, at
least he was able to reason with Christopher and restrain him from
fetching out his motor-bicycle and tearing off through the night to
Chickover.

‘It’s that blasted son-in-law of hers,’ Christopher kept on
repeating,--showing, Lewes considered, a lamentable want of balance.
‘<i>He’s</i> at the bottom of this----’

Lewes, applying his mind to probabilities, soon hit on the truth, and
pointed out that the telegram that had certainly been sent was too late
in arriving to be delivered in London that night, and he would get it
the first thing in the morning.

‘But suppose she’s ill? Suppose----’

‘Oh my dear Chris, try and not be a fool. She has simply missed the last
train. You’ll know all about it in the morning.’ And he took him by the
arm and walked him home to Hertford Street.

When they got there Christopher insisted on his going up and having a
drink. Lewes did his best not to, for he had no wish to behold his
friend’s married <i>milieu</i>; but Christopher was determined, and he gave
in and went.

He felt a faint distaste at seeing his friend opening a door, his only
by marriage, with a latch-key belonging really to a woman, but
suppressed this as foolish. Fortunately the flat was not the thing of
fal-lals he had imagined, and he was quite relieved on being taken into
the drawing-room to find it so solid and so sombre.

‘George,’ explained Christopher, seeing his friend looking round.

‘George?’ repeated Lewes, who had never heard of him.

‘All this black stuff.’

Lewes said nothing.

‘Catherine’s first husband,’ said Christopher. ‘He was old enough to be
her father too.’

‘Was he?’ said Lewes, groping about among these different persons old
enough to be people’s fathers.

He sank into a chair. He drank whisky. At intervals he tried to go, but
Christopher wouldn’t let him. For two hours he had to listen to talk
that made him feel dimmer and dimmer of mind, more and more as if his
roots were wilting; for Christopher was jerked back by Catherine’s
unexpected failure to come home, and his unhappiness at the prospect of
the first night alone in their room, and his efforts not to be anxious
and worried, into thinking and talking only of her.

‘My dear chap--yes ...,’ ‘Old man, I’m sure of it ...,’ Lewes, as
sympathetically as he could, from time to time interjected. But his head
drooped; his spirit failed him. Women. What didn’t they do to a
sensible, intelligent man? Made him go all slushy and rotten; turned him
into nothing better than a jabbering ass. Much of it was whisky, Lewes
allowed, as Christopher drowned his disappointment and secret fear in
more and more of the stuff, but most of it was woman.

‘Look here, I must be off,’ he said, getting up firmly on Christopher’s
showing a tendency, after quite a lot of whisky, to become too intimate
in his talk for comfort. ‘This room’s pure George,’ he had been saying,
‘but Catherine’s bedroom--you should see Catherine’s bedroom----‘--was
he going to offer to show it to him?

Lewes hurriedly got up and said he must be off.

‘You’re not crawling back into your shell already?’ cried Christopher,
much flushed, and his hair, from his frequent passing his hand through
it while he talked, much ruffled. ‘I’ll tell you what you are,
Lucy--you’re nothing but a miserable whelk.’ And he laughed
immoderately.

‘I’ve some work I must get finished to-night,’ said Lewes, taking no
notice of this.

‘At two in the morning?’ exclaimed Christopher, laughing louder than
ever. ‘That’s just the sort of thing you would do at two in the morning.
Get married, old whelk--get married----’ He clapped him on the
shoulder. ‘You jolly well wouldn’t----’

‘Good night,’ interrupted Lewes abruptly.

But after he had gone Christopher soon recovered from the exuberance of
whisky, and went very sadly to bed. He missed Catherine terribly. The
flat was the loneliest place without her. And what if something had
happened to her after all, in spite of Lewes’s cold-blooded assurances
that nearly always nothing happens to anybody? He didn’t sleep much. He
hated being alone in that dear room of happiness; and when at breakfast
he got the telegram, as Lewes had foretold, saying she was coming by the
first train, he determined to chuck the office and go and meet her.

Catherine, however, anxiously turning over every possibility, had
thought that he might do this, and at Chickover station, eluding Stephen
who was talking to a parishioner, sent a second telegram saying she
wouldn’t be back till dinner. Her one desire was to keep out of
Christopher’s sight till she had been to Maria Rome. Impossible to let
him see her in the state she was in. Well did she know that this was
being a slave, a silly slave, and that it was cruel to leave him all day
wondering what was happening, but she <i>was</i> a slave, and this cruelty
was nothing to the cruelty to them both of letting him meet her and see
what she now looked like really. So she sent the second telegram.

Naturally, Christopher was excessively perturbed when he got in. What in
damnation had happened in that beastly Chickover? Never again should she
go there without him. Never again should she go a step without him. And
she hadn’t taken any luggage with her, and she would be worn out. Blast
Stephen. Blast that girl. And probably the bird-faced mother-in-law had
had a hand in all this too. If so, let her be specially and thoroughly
blasted.

He looked up the trains, and found that one arrived at 5.30, and there
was no other till after ten. The 5.30 must be the one, then. He told
Mrs. Mitcham, who had shown every symptom of astonishment and uneasiness
on getting to the flat that morning and finding her mistress hadn’t
returned, to have dinner ready earlier than usual, because Mrs. Monckton
would be badly needing food, and then he went to his office after all,
intending to go to Waterloo to meet the 5.30.

What a day it was. He couldn’t do a stroke of work. He felt like nothing
on earth after the whisky. His chief was sarcastic. Everything went
wrong. At five he was starting for Waterloo when Mrs. Mitcham rang him
up to say her mistress was safely back and resting.

Safely back? How had she managed that, with no train that he knew of?

He flew home. Catherine, her face beautifully rearranged, was lying in
the shaded drawing-room.

‘Why, darling--how? When----?’ he cried, rushing across to her.

He didn’t wait for an answer. There was no time for one before he had
picked her up and locked her in his arms.

Oh, how blessed this was--oh, <i>oh</i> how blessed this was, sighed
Catherine, her cheek against his, her eyes shut, safe in heaven again.

The great feature of Maria Rome’s treatment was that it was
husband-proof. Nothing came off.




XII


Catherine made much of Virginia’s fainting.

‘What she want to faint for?’ asked Christopher sceptically. ‘A great
girl like that.’

‘Well, she <i>did</i>. So of course I couldn’t leave her sooner.’

But when she was saying this sort of thing she felt uncomfortable. Such
tiresome almost lying, such petty almost truth. She seemed now to walk
continually in small deceits. It was as though her feet couldn’t move a
step without getting into a tangle of repulsive little cobwebs. Nothing
much really; nothing more than she supposed most women, whom she began
to think of as creatures necessarily on the defensive, had to wade
through; but so different from the clean-swept path along which she had
all her life till then proceeded. All her life? All her death. That
hadn’t been life. Up to her marriage with Christopher she had merely
been dead. Now she was alive; and mustn’t she take the stings and the
pains and even the pettiness of life gladly, in return for its
beatitudes?

But they worried her, the stings and the pains and the pettiness. Also,
beatitudes were expensive. They forced her to go oftener to Maria Rome,
and the oftener she went the more she needed her. It was like
drug-taking. And suppose there should come a point--in her heart she
knew it must come--when Maria’s ministrations would merely accentuate
what they were intended to hide? Once or twice lately she had fancied
they had been less successful; or was it that there was more to do to
her the deeper she sank in this business of being young and happy? She
led a racked life, an uneasy mixture of fears and blisses. And the grey
in her hair seemed to multiply, and it too had to be treated by Maria
Rome, and she began to look more and more like somebody
adventurous,--she who was really the most unadventurous of
perch-clinging doves.

The thought of Virginia’s life,--Virginia, so young, so needing to do
nothing to herself, so completely at ease with her elderly husband--made
her sigh as the overheated and overtired sigh at the thought of cool
shadows and clear waters. There <i>was</i> a difference, and it was simply
all the difference in the world, between their two cases. She had been
horribly right when at the beginning she snubbed Christopher for
declaring there wasn’t. Stephen didn’t need to watch Virginia as she
watched Christopher, anxiously on the alert for the least sign of change
in her, in what she did, what she said, in the very tone in which she
said it. Stephen was safe, was at rest; Virginia would never, never do
anything but love him. He was the father of her child, the authority she
looked up to, the intelligence she adored. But Catherine--she wasn’t
going to be the mother of any child of Christopher’s, she hadn’t got any
intelligence for him to adore, and wouldn’t have wished to have
authority, even if she could have, for him to look up to. For her there
was nothing but strain and effort, with the tormenting knowledge that
her very strain and effort were bound to bring about what she dreaded.

It was a terrible business, this business of bliss. She clung to him,
clung to him, tighter and tighter, as if his youth must somehow get
through and make her young to match.

Now nobody can be clung to tightly for any length of time without
presently feeling that they would like a little air; and soon after the
return from Chickover, when he had got over his anxiety at her absence
and his joy at her return, Christopher began to have this feeling. It
was gorgeous to love and be loved as he and Catherine loved, but it was
a patent and acknowledged fact, and he gradually now began to want to
talk about something else. Catherine apparently never wanted to. She
loved, he couldn’t but notice, anxiously. She seemed to have very little
of the repose of real faith, and she needed an incredible amount of
reassuring. And when he had reassured her, and got her quiet and placid
as he supposed, there she was needing it all over again.

Marriage being mainly repetition, and Christopher now being a husband,
he presently began to make fewer rapturous speeches. It was quite
unconscious, but as the weeks passed it became natural to love with
fewer preliminary cooings--to bill, as it were, without remembering
first to coo.

He wouldn’t have noticed it if Catherine hadn’t noticed it and said
something about it. Whereupon he began to meditate on this, as he
recognised, undoubted fact, and came to the following conclusions:

A husband cannot go on cooing after he has ceased to thrill, but he can
go on very happily billing. Only mystery thrills, and only the unknown
is mysterious. It wasn’t reasonable for the dear explored one to want
still to be mysterious, for the so felicitously known to want still to
be unknown. Catherine was the darlingest love of a wife, and every
night when he went to sleep with his arms round her he thanked God he
had got her, but she was no longer mysterious; his heart would never
give great choking bumps again when he came near her. Yet that, it
seemed, was what she wanted and expected. And she had a really
remarkable love-memory, and never forgot a single love-look or love-word
or love-vow or love-action of his, and had taken to comparing him with
himself,--which was rather awkward, for unconsciously at the beginning,
it appeared, he had been creating precedents and setting a standard; and
the standard, it appeared, was a very high one, and the precedents were
difficult to follow in calmer blood.

What he now wanted, thought Christopher, reflecting on these things, was
to lead a happy, healthy, lovemaking life, in which all the speeches
were taken for granted. Was that out of the way at all? Didn’t married
people inevitably get into this condition after a bit? He supposed that
the difference between himself and Catherine--he hated to admit there
could be such a thing--was their several attitude towards billing and
cooing. He wanted--and he imagined most husbands at last wanted--to bill
without cooing, and she wasn’t happy in any billing that hadn’t been
preceded by coos. Loud coos, too; loud and long ones.

Well, no man can coo for ever. Christopher was convinced of that. Not
with spontaneity, anyhow. He tried to once or twice just to please her,
but she instantly found him out and was tremendously upset. He then
tried to laugh about it and tease her; but she wouldn’t laugh and be
teased. She took everything that had to do with love very seriously. Her
view was that love was like God, and couldn’t be joked about without
profanity.

She told him this used to be his view too. Was it? He couldn’t remember,
but didn’t tell her he couldn’t, for a certain amount of caution, highly
unnatural to him, began to creep into what he said. The expression ‘used
to be’ seemed to recur rather a lot, he thought. He had heard tell of
one’s evil past dogging one’s footsteps, but fancy being dogged by one’s
alleged satisfactory past, and having it shake its fists at one!

He told her this one morning, waking up in the jolly, careless mood when
he would have tickled a tiger; but she only looked thoroughly alarmed,
and said he never used to talk like that.

What a frightened, nervy little thing she was. What was she frightened
of? He couldn’t imagine; but he only had to look at her eyes to see she
<i>was</i> frightened. She was happiest and most content when they didn’t go
anywhere, and didn’t do anything but just sit in the flat together, she
curled up close to him on the sofa, and he reading aloud. They spent
evening after evening this way. About every third evening or so she
would suddenly get into a panic lest he found it boring, and would start
making eager plans about things they would do next week: they would go
to the play, and have supper afterwards, or motor down into the country
and drift round on the river and come home by moonlight.

When the time came she would cling to him and beg him to let her off.
Let her off! What a funny way of putting it, he would tell her, laughing
and kissing her. Was she going to have a baby, he began to wonder? And
he asked her so one evening, when she was wriggling out of a plan they
had made that involved exertion.

She seemed thunderstruck. ‘Chris!’ she cried, staring at him.

Well, why not? he asked. People did. Especially women, he said, trying
to make her laugh, because her face had gone so very tragic. They had
babies much more often than they had husbands, anyhow. She must have
noticed that.

‘But not if--not if----’ she stammered, her eyes full of tears.

Oh Lord--he had forgotten that age-complex of hers. He never thought of
her age. She was as old to him as she looked, and she looked the same
age as himself. He never could remember that she was convinced she was a
little Methuselah.

‘After all,’ he said cheerfully, still trying to make her laugh, ‘there
was Sarah. I don’t see why you----’

‘Sarah!’

She stood looking at him a moment, and then ran out of the room.

Horrified, he ran after her; but she had locked herself into the
bedroom, their bedroom--locked herself in, and him out.

This was their first scene. And it was peculiarly distressing, because
nobody was angry, only sorry.




XIII


Soon after this the Fanshawes gave a dinner, and invited the Moncktons.
It was, in fact, a dinner for Catherine, who hadn’t enjoyed their dance
very much, they felt. Dinners were perhaps pleasanter for her now, they
decided. It couldn’t be much fun, Ned had remarked, to sit looking on at
that great red-headed lout of hers dancing with a pack of girls, just as
if she were chaperoning her débutant s----

‘Oh <i>hush</i>, Ned!’ cried Kitty Fanshawe, stamping her foot.

For some reason, impossible Catherine considered to account for, except
as one of the many off-shoots of their warmly benevolent dispositions,
the Fanshawe family as one man loved her. They had known her slightly in
the days of George, and with growing intimacy ever since. In those days
they had deplored that she should be tied to one so old; they were now
engaged in deploring that she should be tied to one so young.
Fanshawe-like they wouldn’t even to themselves judge any one they loved,
but tacitly making the best of a bad job, set about seeing what they
could do to amuse and entertain her.

They came to the conclusion that a little dinner at a restaurant would
be more amusing than a dinner at home, and chose the Berkeley; and they
reserved one of those tables in the window-recesses which have sofas
fitted round three sides of them.

The party was eight: themselves, the Moncktons, Sir Musgrove and Lady
Merriman--great friends of theirs, and both delightful, which made them
conspicuous among married couples, who sometimes were, the Fanshawes
were forced regretfully to admit, unequal in attractiveness, so that
while one of them would make a party go the other would prevent its
budging--and Duncan Amory, a rising barrister. But at the last moment
Kitty Fanshawe caught a cold and couldn’t come, and Mrs. Fanshawe
invited Emily Wickford, an agreeable spinster, to take her place.

Five sat on the sofa, and three on chairs on the outer side of the
table. Mrs. Fanshawe put Catherine in the middle of the sofa facing the
room, between Ned and Sir Musgrove--Ned had invented a birthday for her,
so that she should be the guest of honour and he could give her flowers,
for Ned was good but tactless, and it hadn’t occurred to him that
birthdays were the last things Catherine wished attention drawn to--and
on Ned’s left sat Lady Merriman, and on her left sat Christopher, and on
his left sat Miss Wickford, and on her left sat Duncan Amory, with Mrs.
Fanshawe next to him on his other side, between him and Sir Musgrove.

All would have been well if it hadn’t been for Miss Wickford. That
exquisite spinster, who had refused so many offers that she could hardly
be called a spinster at all, was still only twenty-eight, and had the
most beautiful eyes in London. She had been invited merely to fill
Kitty’s place, and the Fanshawes had thought of her only because she was
a great friend of Duncan Amory’s, and he at any rate would enjoy
himself if she came.

Unfortunately, Sir Musgrove and Christopher enjoyed themselves too
because she came--at least, Sir Musgrove did at the beginning. Taking
advantage of the table being round, he leaned over whenever he could to
talk to Miss Wickford, and while he was doing that he naturally wasn’t
talking to Catherine, for whose entertainment he had been specially
invited; and Christopher, whose duty it was to begin by talking to Lady
Merriman, at once upset the balance of the party by talking to Miss
Wickford instead.

This left Ned to amuse two neglected ladies, and as he wasn’t amusing he
didn’t amuse them. It also cut off Duncan Amory from his dear Emily, for
Emily liked beginnings rather than endings, and therefore preferred
Christopher, whom she hadn’t seen before, to Duncan whom she had seen
almost too much; and, regarding him as years younger than herself,
probably still at Oxford, or the other place, proceeded to give the boy
a good time and see that he thoroughly enjoyed his evening.

She succeeded. Christopher did enjoy himself. Here was a girl who was
clever as well as pretty, delightful to talk to as well as delightful to
look at. In ten minutes he felt as if they were old friends. She asked
him if he had any Scandinavian blood in him, because that was what he
looked like,--rather her idea of a sun-kissed young Norse god; and he
retorted by asking her if she had any Greek blood in her, because that
was what she looked like,--rather his idea of a sun-kissed young Greek
goddess; and they laughed, and were pleased with each other. Aphrodite
for choice, said Christopher warming to his work, and glancing first at
Emily’s hair and then at her justly celebrated eyes; Aphrodite was fair
too, and had eyes like the sea too, he said; all the most beautiful
women were fair and had eyes like the sea, he said.

Emily was much pleased.

Sir Musgrove, catching the word Aphrodite, tried to chime in, for he was
not only a well-known Greek scholar, engaged at that very moment in
writing an inquiry into the mythologies, but he would have been
interested to discuss the delicious goddess with Miss Wickford. Duncan
Amory also tried to chime in, with a story about an American lady who by
some mix-up at her baptism got christened Aphrodite, and the effect it
had on her afterwards. It wasn’t a bad story, and anyhow it was apt, and
he felt aggrieved that nobody listened to it except the Fanshawes. The
others were absorbed in watching Emily. Emily wasn’t at all a good
person to have at a party, thought Amory. She absorbed attention. Her
proper place was a <i>tête-à-tête</i>. That was how he himself chiefly
cultivated her. He shrugged his shoulders, and turned resolutely to Mrs.
Fanshawe.

Lady Merriman was bored. Able and willing to talk about anything,--book,
play, picture or politician--she found herself, because of Miss
Wickford, left with only half a man; half of Ned Fanshawe, too, who even
when he was whole had more of good nature than of conversation. And she
wished very much to talk to this young Mr. Monckton and find out for
herself what could have induced that middle-aged woman to be so reckless
as to marry him. However, he was engrossed. Natural, she supposed, at
his age. What wasn’t so natural was that Musgrove was engrossed too. He
would talk to neither of his neighbours, and had eyes and ears only for
Miss Wickford.

Lady Merriman, who was fond of Musgrove, and had been faithfully and
patiently through the thick and the thin of him for twenty-five years,
was a little put out; not on her own account, for nothing, she knew,
could alter his complete private dependence on her, but on his. She
didn’t like her man, who was anything but silly, to look it. Also, she
did wish he would amuse poor Mrs. Monckton, and distract her attention
from what that boy of hers was saying to Miss Wickford. Marriage,
thought Lady Merriman, observing the expression on Musgrove’s face and
observing the expression on Catherine’s, was rich in humiliations. If
one allowed it to be, that is; if one didn’t keep them out by the only
real defence--laughter.

The band began to play a fox-trot. One or two active young people got up
from neighbouring tables and danced.

‘Will you dance?’ Christopher asked Miss Wickford.

‘I’d adore to,’ she answered, getting up just as the waiter put a nice
hot quail on her plate. ‘May we?’ she asked, smiling at Mrs. Fanshawe,
and floating off without waiting for an answer.

‘Ah, youth, youth,’ said Sir Musgrove, shaking his head indulgently.
‘And we greybeards console ourselves with quails.’

This was tactless of Musgrove, Mrs. Fanshawe considered, and she
protested.

‘There are no greybeards here,’ protested Mrs. Fanshawe with great
vigour.

‘Ah well--I speak allegorically,’ said Sir Musgrove, following Miss
Wickford’s movements as she exquisitely gyrated in Christopher’s arms.

‘I should eat your quail before it gets cold, Musgrove,’ said his
wife,--it was all Martha’s fault for not having put such effervescent
guests on the sofa, safe behind the table where they couldn’t have got
out. But some one ought to tell Mrs. Monckton not to look quite so....

‘Personally, I think it foolish to interrupt a good dinner and let it
get cold,’ said Duncan Amory, who didn’t at all like the way Emily was
behaving.

‘My dear friend, they are at the golden age when dinner is of no
consequence,’ said Sir Musgrove. ‘A good-looking couple--a very
good-looking couple,’ he added dreamily, his eye on Emily.

Well, really--hadn’t Musgrove grasped the fact that the young man was
Mrs. Monckton’s husband? thought Lady Merriman, trying to catch the eye
that was fixed so persistently on Miss Wickford.

The Fanshawes saw their mistake, and were repenting bitterly. Of course
Emily Wickford should have been put on the sofa. Better still, not asked
at all. She was ruining the party for every one except Catherine’s
husband. Duncan Amory, usually such good company, was sulking;
Musgrove--they couldn’t have believed it of him; Lydia
Merriman--naturally she was vexed; Catherine--well, they hardly liked to
look at her.

The band left off playing, and the couples all came back except
Christopher and Miss Wickford. They disappeared through the arch into
the next room, Emily smiling back over her shoulder at her hosts, and
Christopher holding up an explanatory cigarette case.

It was Emily who proposed this. She said she didn’t want any more
dinner, and thought it much more fun not to sit cooped up at that
table, with which Christopher heartily agreed.

‘They all seem so old,’ said Emily, bending forward for him to light her
cigarette. ‘Don’t you think so?’

‘Fossils,’ said Christopher, forgetting in his admiration of the face
being lit up by the match he was holding, that Catherine was one of
them, but he did ask, after a minute, whether she didn’t think the
Fanshawes would mind their not going back.

‘Oh, they never mind anything,’ said Emily easily. ‘They’re darlings.’

The Fanshawes, however, did mind this. They fumed. It was a stricken
party that remained at the table. Mrs. Fanshawe was casting her mind
back to whether Emily knew Christopher was Catherine’s husband, and
couldn’t remember that she had made this clear when she introduced them.
But how, after all, could one make a thing like that clear, short of
taking the other person aside and explaining in a whisper? Just to say,
‘And this is Mr. Monckton,’ after having introduced somebody to Mrs.
Monckton wasn’t in this case, she was afraid, enough. On the other hand
one couldn’t introduce him as Mrs. Monckton’s husband. Still, instinct
ought to have told Emily. Mrs. Fanshawe, who never was unfair, was
unfair now. She was angry. She was the last person in the world to
grudge young people having a good time, and was of an easy-goingness
that verged on laxity; but this deeply annoyed her, this carrying off of
Christopher. Also, she considered that Christopher oughtn’t to have let
himself be carried off. He, at any rate, knew he was Catherine’s
husband.

It was a stricken party. Ned was furious, Sir Musgrove fidgeted, Duncan
Amory sulked, and Catherine seemed to be shrivelling smaller before
their very eyes. Only Lady Merriman and Mrs. Fanshawe talked,--across
the table to each other, gallantly, after the manner of women, trying to
cover things up.

The music began again, and everybody watched the arch. It was some time
before the two appeared, and when they did they were talking and
laughing as happily as ever.

‘Come here--you are very unkind, you two, deserting us like this,’ Mrs.
Fanshawe called out to them as they danced past; but they didn’t hear,
and danced on.

At the end, when the party was breaking up, Miss Wickford, who had
enjoyed her evening immensely, said to Christopher, ‘Come and see me on
Sunday.’

‘No--you come to us,’ he answered.

She looked at him surprised. ‘But wouldn’t that bore your mother
dreadfully?’ she asked.

‘Bore my mother?’ echoed Christopher, staring. ‘What mother?’

‘Why, isn’t----’

Miss Wickford broke off, instinctively feeling she was somehow getting
into trouble. That little made-up Mrs. Monckton on the sofa--wasn’t she
the boy’s mother?

‘My mother died when I was three,’ said Christopher.

‘Poor you,’ murmured Miss Wickford non-commitally: something warned her
to be cautious.

‘But my wife will be delighted if you’ll come.’

There was the briefest silence. Then Emily managed to say, without, she
trusted, showing her astonishment, ‘How perfectly sweet of her. I’ll
ring up and ask.’




XIV


She never did. And it was just as well, thought Christopher, for
Catherine had, most astoundingly, taken it into her head to be jealous
of her. She wouldn’t admit she was, and professed immense admiration for
Miss Wickford’s beauty, but if the emotion she showed after that dinner
wasn’t jealousy he was blest if he knew what jealousy was.

It amazed him. She might have heard every word he said. Miss Wickford
was extremely pretty and quite clever, and why shouldn’t he like talking
to her? But he was very sorry to have made Catherine unhappy, and did
all he knew to make her forget it; only it was suffocating sort of work
in hot weather, and he felt as if he were tied up in something very
sweet and sticky, with no end to it. Rather like treacle. It was rather
like being swathed round with bands of treacle.

He came to the conclusion Catherine loved him too much. Yes, she did. If
she loved him more reasonably she would be much happier, and so would
he. It was bad for them both. The flat seemed thick with love. One
waded. He caught himself putting up his hand to unbutton his collar.
Perhaps the stuffy weather had something to do with it. July was getting
near its end, and there was no air at all in Hertford Street. London was
a rotten place in July. He always walked to his office and back so as
to get what exercise he could, and every Saturday they went down to his
uncle for golf; but what was that? He ached to be properly stretched, to
stride about, to hit things for days on end, and his talk became almost
exclusively of holidays, and where they should go in August when his
were due.

Lewes was going to Scotland to play golf. He had gone with Lewes last
year, and had had a glorious time. What exercise! What talk! What
freedom! He longed to go again, and asked Catherine whether she wouldn’t
like to; and she said, with that hiding look of hers--there was a
certain look, very frequent on her face, he called to himself her
<i>hiding</i> look--that it was too far from Virginia.

Virginia? Christopher was much surprised. What did she want with
Virginia? Short of actually being at Chickover, she wouldn’t see
Virginia anyhow, he said; and she, with her arms round his neck, said
that was true, but she didn’t want to be out of reach of her.

This unexpected reappearance of Virginia on the scene, this sudden
cropping up of her after a long spell of no mention of the girl, puzzled
and irritated him. They would, apparently, have gone to Scotland if it
hadn’t been for Virginia. Must he then too--of course he must, seeing
that he couldn’t and wouldn’t go away without Catherine--be kept hanging
round within reach of Virginia? She was the last object he wished to be
within reach of.

He was annoyed, and showed it. ‘Why this recrudescence,’ he asked, ‘of
maternal love?’

‘It isn’t a recrudescence--it’s always, Chris darling,’ she said,
looking rather shamefacedly at him, he thought--anyhow queerly. ‘You
don’t suppose one ever leaves off loving somebody one really loves?’

No, he didn’t suppose it. He was sure she wouldn’t. But he wasn’t going
into that now; he wasn’t going, at ten in the morning, to begin talking
about love.

‘It’s time I was off,’ he said, bending down and kissing her quickly.
‘I’m late as it is.’

He hurried out, though he wasn’t late. He knew he wasn’t late, only he
did want to get into what air there was,--into, anyhow, sunlight, out of
that darkened bedroom.

She too knew he wasn’t late, but she too wanted him for once to go,
because she had a secret appointment for half-past ten, and it was ten
already; a most important, a vital appointment, the bare thought of
which thrilled her with both fear and hope.

She didn’t know if anything would come of it, but she was going to try.
She had written to the great man and told him her age and asked if he
thought he could do anything for her, and he had sent a card back
briefly indicating 10.30 on this day. Nothing more: just 10.30. How
discreet. How exciting.

She had read about him in the papers. He was a Spanish doctor, come over
to London for a few weeks, and he undertook to restore youth.
Marvellous, blissful, if he really could! A slight operation, said the
papers, and there you were. The results were most satisfactory, they
affirmed, and in some cases miraculous. Suppose her case were to be one
of the miraculous ones? She hadn’t the least idea how she would be able
to have an operation without Christopher knowing, but all that could be
thought out afterwards. The first thing to do was to see the doctor and
hear what he had to say. Who wouldn’t do anything, take any pains, have
any operation, to be helped back to youth? She, certainly, would shrink
from nothing. And it sounded so genuine, so scientific, what the doctor,
according to the papers, did.

The minute Christopher had gone she hurried into her clothes, refused
breakfast, hadn’t time to do her face--better she shouldn’t that day,
better she should be seen exactly as she really was--and twenty minutes
after he left she was in a taxi on the way to the great man’s temporary
consulting rooms in Portland Place.

With what a beating heart she rang the bell. Such hopes, such fears,
such determination, such shrinking, all mixed up together, as well as
being ashamed, made her hardly able to speak when the nurse--she looked
like a nurse--opened the door. And suppose somebody should hear her when
she said who she was? And suppose somebody she knew should see her going
in? If ever there was a discreet and private occasion it was this one;
so that the moment the door was opened she was in such a hurry to get in
out of sight of the street that she almost tumbled into the arms of the
nurse.

It gave her an unpleasant shock to find herself put into a room with
several other people. She hadn’t thought she would have to face other
seekers after youth. There ought to have been cubicles--places with
screens. It didn’t seem decent to expose the seekers to one another like
that; and she shrank down into a chair with her back to the light, and
buried her head in a newspaper.

The others were all burying their heads too in newspapers, but they saw
each other nevertheless. All men, she noticed, and all so old that
surely they must be past any hopes and wishes? What could they want with
youth? It was a sad sight, thought Catherine, peeping round her
newspaper, and she felt shocked. When presently two women came in, and
after a furtive glance round dropped as she had done into chairs with
their backs to the light, she considered them sad sights too and felt
shocked; while for their part they were thinking just the same of her,
and all the men behind their newspapers were saying to themselves, ‘What
fools women are.’

The nurse--she looked exactly like a nurse--came in after a long while
and beckoned to her, not calling out her name, for which she was
thankful, and she was shown into the consulting room, and found herself
confronted by two men instead of one, because Dr. Sanguesa, the
specialist, could only say three words in English--‘We will see’ were
his words--so that there was another man there, dark and foreign-looking
too, but voluble in English, to interpret.

He did the business part as well. ‘It will cost fifty pounds,’ he said
almost immediately.

In a whole year Catherine had only ten of these for everything, but if
the treatment had been going to cost all ten she would have agreed, and
lived somehow in an attic, on a crust--with Christopher and youth.
Indeed, she thought it very cheap. Surely fifty pounds was cheap for
youth?

‘Twenty-five pounds down,’ said the partner--she decided he was more a
partner than an interpreter--‘and twenty-five pounds in the middle of
the treatment.’

‘Certainly,’ she murmured.

Dr. Sanguesa was observing her while the partner talked. Every now and
then he said something in Spanish, and the other asked her a question.
The questions were intimate and embarrassing,--the kind it is more
comfortable to reply to to one person rather than two. However, she was
in for it; she mustn’t mind; she was determined not to mind anything.

In her turn she asked some questions, forcing herself to be courageous,
for she was frightened in spite of her determination and hopes. Would it
hurt, she asked timidly; would it take long; when would the results
begin?

‘We will see,’ said Dr. Sanguesa, who hadn’t understood a word, nodding
his head gravely.

It would not hurt, said the partner, because in the case of women it was
dangerous to operate, and the treatment was purely external; it would
take six weeks, with two treatments a week; she would begin to see a
marked difference in her appearance after the fourth treatment.

The fourth treatment? That would be in a fortnight. And no operation?
How wonderful. She caught her breath with excitement. In a fortnight she
would be beginning to look younger. After that, every day younger and
younger. No more Maria Rome, no more painful care over her dressing, no
more fear of getting tired because of how ghastly it made her look, but
the real thing, the real glorious thing itself.

‘Shall I <i>feel</i> young?’ she asked, eagerly now.

‘Of course. Everything goes together. You understand--a woman’s youth,
and accordingly her looks, depends entirely on----’

The partner launched into a rapid explanation which was only saved from
being excessively improper by its technical language. Dr. Sanguesa sat
silent, his elbows on the arms of his revolving chair, his finger-tips
together. He looked a remote, unfriended, melancholy man, rather like
the pictures she had seen of Napoleon III., with dark shadows under his
heavy eyes and a waxen skin. Every now and then his sad mouth opened,
and he said quite automatically, ‘We will see,’ and shut it again.

She wanted to begin at once. It appeared she must be examined first, to
find out if she could stand the treatment. This rather frightened her
again. Why? How? Was the treatment so severe? What was it?

‘We will see,’ said Dr. Sanguesa, nodding.

The partner became voluble, waving his hands about. Not at all--not at
all severe; a matter of X-rays merely; but sometimes, if a woman’s heart
was weak----

Catherine said she was sure her heart wasn’t weak.

‘We will see,’ said Dr. Sanguesa, mechanically nodding.

‘The examination is three guineas,’ said the partner.

‘Three more, or three of the same ones?’ asked Catherine, rather
stupidly.

‘We will s----’

The partner interrupted him this time with a quickly lifted hand. He
seemed to think Catherine’s question was below the level of both his and
her dignities and intelligences, for he looked as if he were a little
ashamed of her as he said stiffly, ‘Three more.’

She bowed her head. She would have bowed her head to anything, if these
men in exchange would give her youth.

The examination could be made at once, the partner said, if she was
ready.

Yes, she was quite ready.

She got up instantly. They were used to eagerness, especially in the
women patients, but this was a greater eagerness than usual. Dr.
Sanguesa’s sombre, sunken eyes observed her thoughtfully. He said
something in Spanish to his partner, who shook his head. Catherine had
the impression it was something he wished interpreted, and she looked
inquiringly at the partner, but he said nothing, and went to the door
and opened it for her.

She was taken upstairs into a sort of Rose du Barri boudoir, arranged
with a dressing-table and looking-glasses, and another nurse--at least,
she too looked like one--helped her to undress. Then she was wrapped in
a dressing-gown--she didn’t like this public dressing-gown against her
skin--and led into a room fitted up with many strange machines and an
operating table. What will not a woman do, she thought, eyeing these
objects with misgiving, and her heart well down somewhere near her feet,
for the man she loves?

Dr. Sanguesa came in, all covered up in white like an angel. The
partner, she was thankful to notice, didn’t appear. She was examined
with great care, the nurse smiling encouragingly. It was a relief to be
told by the nurse, who interpreted, that her heart was sound and her
lungs perfect, even though she had never supposed they weren’t. At the
end the nurse told her the doctor was satisfied she could stand the
treatment, and asked when she would like to begin.

Catherine said she would begin at once.

Impossible. The next day?

Oh yes, yes--the next day. And would she really--she was going to say
look nice again, but said instead feel less tired?

‘It’s wonderful how different people feel,’ the nurse assured her; and
Dr. Sanguesa nodded gravely, without having understood a word, and said,
‘We will see.’

‘He hasn’t tried it on himself, has he?’ remarked Catherine, when she
was in the Rose du Barri room again, dressing.

The nurse laughed. She was a jolly-looking young woman,--but perhaps she
was really an old woman, who had had the treatment.

‘Have <i>you</i> been done?’ asked Catherine.

The nurse laughed again. ‘I shall be if I see I’m getting old,’ she
said.

‘It really <i>is</i> wonderful?’ asked Catherine, whose hands as she fastened
her hooks were trembling with excitement.

‘You wouldn’t believe it,’ said the nurse earnestly. ‘I’ve seen men of
seventy looking and behaving not a day more than forty.’

‘That’s thirty years off,’ said Catherine. ‘And supposing they were
forty to begin with, would they have looked and behaved like ten?’

‘Ah well, that’s a little much to expect, isn’t it,’ said the nurse,
laughing again.

‘I’m forty-seven. I wouldn’t at all like to end by being seven.’

‘Your husband would pack you off to a kindergarten, wouldn’t he,’ said
the nurse, laughing more than ever.

Catherine laughed too. She was so full of hope that she already felt
younger. But when she put on her hat before the glass she saw she didn’t
anyhow look it.

‘Don’t I look <i>too</i> awful,’ she said, turning round frankly to the
friendly nurse, who, after all, was going to be the witness of her
triumphant progress backwards through the years.

‘We’ll soon get rid of all that,’ said the nurse gaily.

Catherine quite loved the nurse.




XV


It was an exciting life during the next week,--so much to plan, so much
to arrange, and she herself buoyant with hope and delight. She couldn’t,
of course, leave London during her treatment, so to Christopher’s
astonishment she urged him to go to Scotland without her.

‘But Catherine----’

He couldn’t believe his own ears.

‘Go and have a good time, Chris darling.’

‘Without you?’

‘I must stay in London.’

‘In <i>London</i>?’

‘Yes. Virginia may want me.’

‘Now what in God’s name, Catherine, is all this about Virginia. The
other day----’

Then she told him, secure in the knowledge that she was so soon going to
be young again--she didn’t in the least mind being a grandmother if she
wasn’t going to look like one; on the contrary, to look like a girl and
yet be a grandmother struck her as to the last degree chic--that
Virginia was expecting a baby in September, and as babies sometimes
appeared before they ought she must be within reach.

Well, that was all right; he understood that. What he didn’t understand
was Catherine’s detachment. Why, she seemed not to mind his leaving her.
He couldn’t believe it. And when it became finally evident that such was
her real attitude and no pretence at all about it, he was deeply hurt.
Incredibly, she genuinely wanted him to go.

‘You love Virginia more than me,’ he said, his heart suddenly hot with
jealousy.

‘Oh Chris, don’t be silly,’ said Catherine impatiently.

She had never since their marriage told him not to be silly in that
sensible, matter-of-fact way. What had come over her? He, who had been
feeling he couldn’t breathe for all the love there was about, now found
himself gasping for want of it. The atmosphere had suddenly gone clear
and rarefied. Catherine seemed to be thinking of something that wasn’t
him, and once or twice forgot to kiss him. Forgot to kiss him! He was
deeply wounded. And she was so unaccountably cheerful too. She not only
seemed to be thinking of something else but seemed amused by it, hugging
whatever it was with delight. She was excited. What was she excited
about? Surely not because she was going to be a grandmother? Surely that
would make her brood more than ever on the difference in their ages?

‘She wants me to go to Scotland with you,’ he said, bursting in one day
on Lewes. ‘She wants me to go away without her. Doesn’t care a hang.
Four solid weeks. The whole of August.’

‘How sensible,’ said Lewes, not looking up from his work.

‘It’s that beastly baby.’

‘Baby?’ Lewes did look up.

‘Due in September.’

‘What? But surely----’

‘Oh, don’t be a fool. Virginia’s. She won’t leave London. Why she can’t
go somewhere round near Chickover, where I could go too and be with her
and get some golf as well--Lewes, old man, I believe she’s fed up with
me.’

And he stared at Lewes with hot eyes.

In his turn Lewes told him not to be a fool; but the mere thought of
Catherine, his Catherine, being fed up with him as he put it, sent him
rushing back to her to see if it could possibly be true.

She was so airy, so much detached.

‘Now Chris, don’t be absurd. Of course you must have a good holiday and
get out of London. It’s lucky that you have your friend to go with----’

That was the sort of thing.

‘But Catherine, how can you want me to? Don’t you love me any more?’

‘Of course I love you. Which is why I want you to go to Scotland.’

This was true. The treatment was being gone through for love of him, and
he must go to Scotland because of the treatment. She was to have as much
quiet as possible during it--‘No husbands,’ said Dr. Sanguesa--‘You’ve
got to be a grass widow for a little while,’ interpreted the nurse--‘You
must go to Scotland,’ still further interpreted Catherine.

But he couldn’t go at once. It was still only July. The first two
treatments took place while Christopher was still in London, and as it
was impossible without rousing his suspicions to keep him entirely at
arm’s length, she wasn’t surprised when the effect of them was to make
her feel more tired than ever.

‘It’s often like that to begin with,’ encouraged the nurse. ‘Especially
if you’re not having complete rest from worries at home.’

Did she mean husbands by worries, Catherine wondered? There certainly
wasn’t complete rest from that sort of worry, then, for Christopher, as
Catherine apparently cooled, became more and more as he used to be, and
possessed by the fear that he was somehow losing her rediscovered how
much he loved her.

He had, of course, always intensely loved her, but he had felt the need
of pauses. In her love there had been no pauses, and gradually the idea
of suffocation had got hold of him. Now, so suddenly, so unaccountably,
she seemed to be all pause. She tried to avoid him; she even suggested,
on the plea that the nights were hot, that he should sleep in the
dressing-room.

Whatever else he had tired of he hadn’t yet tired of the sweetness, the
curious comfort and reassurance, of going to sleep with his arms round
her. Since their marriage there had been no interruption in his wish to
cling at night; what he hadn’t wanted was to be clung to in the morning.
One felt so different in the morning; at least, he did. Catherine
didn’t; and it was this that had given him the impression of stifling in
treacle. Now she not only showed no wish at all to cling in the morning,
but she tried--he wouldn’t and couldn’t believe it, but had to--to
wriggle out of being clung to at night.

‘Catherine, what is it? What has come between us?’ he asked, his eyes
hurt and indignant,--when Catherine had asked this sort of question, as
she had on first noticing a different quality in his love-making, he had
been impatient and bored, and thought in his heart ‘How like all
women,’ but of course he didn’t remember this.

‘Oh Chris, why are you so silly?’ she answered, laughing and pushing him
away. ‘Don’t you feel how hot it is, and how much nicer not to be too
close together? Let us be sanitary.’

Sanitary? That was a pleasant way of putting it. She was going back to
what she used to be at first, when he had such difficulty in getting
hold of her at all,--going back into just being an intelligent little
stand-offish thing, independent, and determined to have nothing to do
with him. How he had worshipped her in those days of her
unattainableness. Her relapse now into what threatened to become
unattainableness all over again didn’t make him worship her, because
that had been the kind of worship that never returns, but it lit his
love up again, while at the same time filling him with a fury of
possessiveness. A thwarted possessiveness, however; she evaded him more
and more.

‘I can’t go to Scotland and leave you. Damn golf. I simply can’t,’ he
said at last.

And she, as cool as a little cucumber and as bright as a gay little
button--the comparisons were his--told him he simply had to, and that
when he came back he would find they were going to be happier than ever.

‘You’ll love me more than ever,’ she said laughing, for though the
treatment was extraordinarily exhausting her spirits those days were
bright with faith.

‘Rot. Nobody could love you more than I do now, so what’s the good of
talking like that? Catherine, what has happened to you? Tell me.’

And there he was, just as he used to be, on the floor at her feet, his
arms clasping her knees, his head on her lap.

All this made Catherine very happy. She began to see benefits in the
treatment other than the ones Dr. Sanguesa had guaranteed.




XVI


He went to Scotland, and she stayed in London. She was inexorable. It
was as if his soft, enveloping pillow had turned into a rock. She lied
at last--how avoid lying, sooner or later, when one was married?--so as
to get rid of him, for he was insisting on taking rooms for them both at
the sea near Chickover, where she could be within reach of Virginia and
yet not away from him. Driven into this corner what could she do but
lie? It is what one does in corners, she thought, excusing herself. She
told him Virginia was probably coming up to London to have her baby in a
nursing home, and that was why she couldn’t go away.

He went off puzzled and unhappy, and his unhappiness filled her with
secret joy. What balm to her spirit, which had lately been so anxious,
to see all these unmistakable symptoms of devoted love in him. And she
pictured his return in September, and herself at the station to meet
him, changed, young, able to do everything with him, a fit mate for him
at last.

‘You’ll never, never know how much I love you,’ she said, her arms round
his neck when she said good-bye.

‘It looks like it, doesn’t it,’ he said gloomily.

‘Exactly like it,’ she laughed. She was always laughing now, just as she
used always to be laughing at their very first meetings.

‘I can’t make it out,’ he said, looking down at her upturned face.
‘You’re sending me away. Suppose I meet that girl up there--Miss
Wickford, or that other one who looked like a shark--I should comfort
myself.’

Even that only made her laugh. ‘Do, Chris darling,’ she said, patting
his face. ‘And then come back and tell me all about it.’

She <i>was</i> changed. He went away extremely miserable, and Lewes’s
talk--that talk he had thirsted for when he thought he wasn’t going to
get it--seemed like just so much gritty drivel.

Left alone in London Catherine gave herself up entirely to the
treatment. Twice a week she went to Portland Place and suffered,--for it
hurt, though Dr. Sanguesa told her through the nurse that it didn’t.
They laid her on a table, and a great machine was lowered to within a
hair’s breadth of her bare skin, her eyes were bandaged, and crackling
things--she couldn’t see what, but they sounded like sparks and felt
like little bright stabbing knives--were let loose on her for half an
hour at a stretch, first on one side of her and then on the other. When
this was over she was injected with some mysterious fluid, and then went
home completely exhausted.

All day afterwards she lay on her sofa, and Mrs. Mitcham brought her
trays of nourishing food. She read and slept. She went to bed at nine
o’clock. She did nothing to her face after Christopher had gone, and
Mrs. Mitcham, looking at her and seeing her so persistently yellow,
asked her with growing concern if she felt quite well.

After the fourth treatment she was to begin and see a difference. How
anxiously she scanned herself in the glass. Nothing. And her body felt
exactly as her face looked,--amazingly weary.

‘It takes longer with some people,’ said the nurse, when Catherine
commented on this on her fifth visit. ‘There was one lady came here who
noticed nothing at all till just before the end, and then you should
have seen her. Why, she skipped out of that door. And sixty, if a day.’

‘Perhaps I’m not old enough,’ said Catherine. ‘All the people you tell
me about are sixty or seventy.’

She was sitting on the sofa of the Rose du Barri boudoir being dressed.
She was too tired to stand up. Those crackles, going on for half an
hour, were a great strain on her endurance. They didn’t hurt enough to
make her cry out, but enough to make her need all her determination not
to.

The nurse laughed. ‘Well, we <i>are</i> depressed to-day, aren’t we,’ she
said brightly. ‘People do get like that about half-way through--the slow
ones, I mean, who don’t react at once as some do. You’ll see. Rome
wasn’t built in a day.’

The next time she came the nurse flung up both hands on seeing her.
‘Why, aren’t you looking well this morning!’ she cried.

Catherine hurried to the glass. ‘Am I?’ she said, staring at herself.

‘<i>Such</i> a change,’ said the nurse with every sign of pleasure. ‘I was
sure it would begin soon. Now you’ll see it going on more and more
quickly every day.’

‘Shall I?’ said Catherine, scrutinising the face in the glass.

For the life of her she could see no difference. She said so. The nurse
laughed at her.

‘Oh, you doubting Thomas,’ said the nurse, whose friendliness had
flowered into a robust familiarity. ‘Just look at yourself now. Don’t
you see?’ And she took her by the shoulders and twisted her round to the
glass again.

No, Catherine didn’t see. She saw the nurse’s laughing, rosy face close
to hers, and hers yellow and pale-lipped,--just as it always was now
when nothing out of Maria Rome’s box had been put on it. Maria Rome had
had a terrible effect on her. Her hair was startlingly more grey, now
that the dye had had time to wear off, than it used to be before any was
put on.

‘It’s the trained eye that can tell,’ said the nurse brightly. ‘I notice
a <i>great</i> change.’

‘Do you?’ was all Catherine could say.

That day she seemed so much more quiet and tired than usual, lying on
her sofa in the flat and not even reading, that Mrs. Mitcham, who hadn’t
been at all happy about her since Christopher’s departure, asked her if
it wouldn’t be a good plan to see a doctor.

Catherine couldn’t help smiling at this. Why, that was what was the
matter with her, that she <i>was</i> seeing a doctor.

‘I shall be all right soon,’ she assured Mrs. Mitcham; for she still
hoped.

It wasn’t till after the ninth treatment that her hopes began to grow
definitely pale. Nothing had happened. She was just as old as ever;
older, if anything, for those stabbing sparks made her brace herself to
an endurance that left her utterly exhausted. The nurse, it is true,
continued stoutly to express delighted surprise each time she saw her,
but this merely caused Catherine to distrust either her sincerity or her
eyesight. She became more silent and less interested in the tales about
other old ladies. Their alleged skipping began to leave her cold. It was
possible, of course, that they had skipped, but she wasn’t able to bring
herself to believe in it really.

‘Those other old ladies----’ she said, on her eleventh visit.

The nurse interrupted her with a gay burst of laughter. ‘You’re never
going to class yourself with old ladies?’ she cried. ‘Now, Mrs.
Monckton, that’s really naughty of you. I won’t allow it. I shall have
to scold you soon, you know.’

‘Well, but this is my eleventh time, and you said they were all skipping
by their eleventh time----’

‘Not all. Come, come now. It takes people differently, you know.’

Not that I want to skip,’ said Catherine, wearily pinning up a strand of
hair the eye-bandage had loosened. ‘It’s that I don’t feel the least
shred of the remotest desire to.’

‘That’ll come. It’ll all come in time.’

‘In what time?’ asked Catherine. ‘I’ve only got one treatment more.’

‘It often happens that people feel the benefit afterwards. Weeks,
perhaps, afterwards. They wake up one morning, and find themselves
suddenly quite young.’

Catherine said nothing to this. Her hopes had flickered very small by
now.

The nurse, as jolly as ever, rallied her and laughed at her for being so
ungrateful, when she only had to look at herself to see----

‘I’m always looking at myself, and I never see,’ said Catherine.

‘Oh, <i>aren’t</i> you a naughty little thing!’ cried the nurse. ‘I don’t
know what would become of poor Dr. Sanguesa if all his patients were as
obstinately blind as you. Well, there’s still Thursday. Sometimes the
last treatment of all convinces the patient, and we shall have you
writing us wonderful testimonials----’

There was no response to this gaiety. Catherine went away heavy-footed.
She was poorer by fifty pounds, Christopher was coming home in a week,
and that bright dream of meeting him at the station seemed to the last
degree unlikely to be realised. Useless for the nurse to pretend there
was a difference in her; there was none. Perhaps if she hadn’t pretended
Catherine would have been more able to believe. But the nurse treating
her like a fool--well, but wasn’t that precisely what she was? Wasn’t
any woman a fool who could suppose that she could be stirred up to youth
again by showers of stabbing crackles?

She went home heavy-footed and ashamed. Trouble, expense,
disappointment, an intolerable long separation from Christopher,--that
was all she had got out of this. Oh yes--she had got the useful
knowledge that she was a fool; but she had had that before.

Still, she wouldn’t quite give up hope yet. There was one more
treatment, and it might well be that she would suddenly take a turn....

But she never had the final treatment, and never saw either Dr. Sanguesa
or the nurse again; for when she got home that day, she found a telegram
from Mrs. Colquhoun, asking her to come to Chickover at once.




XVII


There was a note of urgency in the telegram that made Catherine afraid.
Going down in the slow afternoon train, the first she could catch, which
stopped so often and so long, she had much time to think, and it seemed
to her that all this she had been doing since her marriage was curiously
shabby and disgraceful. What waste of emotions, what mean fears. Now
came real fear, and at its touch those others shrivelled up. Virginia
down there at grips with danger, being tortured--oh, she knew what
torture--just this stark fact shocked her back to vision.

She sat looking out of the window at the fields monotonously passing,
and many sharp-edged thoughts cut through her mind, and one of them was
of the last time she had gone down to Chickover, and of her gaiety
because some strange man, taken in by the cleverness with which Maria
Rome had disguised her, had obviously considered her younger than she
was. How pitiful, how pitiful; what a sign one was indeed old when a
thing like that could excite one and make one feel pleased.

She stared at this memory a moment, before it was hustled off by other
thoughts, in wonder. The stuff one filled life with! And at the faintest
stirring of Death’s wings, the smallest movement forward of that great
figure from the dark furthermost corner of the little room called life,
how instantly one’s eyes were smitten open. One became real. Was one
ever real till then? Had there to be that forward movement, that
reminder, ‘I am here, you know,’ before one could wake from one’s
strange, small dreams?

She had to wait an hour at the junction. This comforted her, for if
things had been serious the car would have been sent for her there.

It was past nine when she reached Chickover. The chauffeur who met her
looked unhappy, but could tell her nothing except that his mistress had
been ill since the morning. The avenue was dark, the great trees in
solemn row shutting out what still was left of twilight, and the house
at the end was dark too and very silent. The place seemed to be holding
its breath, as if aware of the battle being fought on the other side in
the rooms towards the garden.

Silence everywhere, complete and strange; except----

Yes--what was that?

She caught her breath and stopped; for as she was crossing the hall,
past the pale maid, a slow moaning crept down the stairs like a trickle
of blood,--a curious slow moaning, not human at all, more like some poor
animal, dying hopelessly by inches in a trap.

Virginia....

Catherine stood struck with horror. That noise? Virginia? Just like an
animal?

She looked round at Kate. Their white faces stared at each other. Kate’s
lips moved. ‘Since this morning,’ came out of them. ‘Since early this
morning. The master----’

She broke off, her pale lips remaining open.

Catherine turned and ran upstairs. She ran as one demented towards the
moaning. It must be stopped, it must be stopped. Virginia must be saved,
she couldn’t, she mustn’t be allowed to suffer like that, nobody should
be allowed to suffer like that, hours and hours....

She ran along the passage to Virginia’s room, the same room where
nineteen years ago Virginia herself had been born, but instead of
getting nearer the moaning she seemed to be going away from it.

Where was Virginia, then? Where had they put her?

She stood still to listen, and her heart beat so loud that she could
hardly hear. There--to the left, where the spare-rooms were. But why?
Why had they taken her there?

She ran down the passage to the left. Yes; here it was; behind this shut
door....

Catherine’s knees seemed to be going to give way. The sound was terribly
close,--so hopeless, so unceasing. What were they doing in there to her
child? What was God doing to let them?

Her shaking hand fumbled at the handle. She laid the other over it to
steady it. She mustn’t be like this, she knew; she mustn’t go in there
only to add to the terror that was there already.

With both hands gripping the handle she slowly turned it and went in.

Stephen.

Stephen half sitting, half lying on the floor up against a sofa. His
mother standing looking at him. No one else. The room shrouded in
dust-sheets, the bed piled high with spare blankets and pillows. Stephen
moaning.

‘Stephen!’ Catherine exclaimed, so much shocked that she could only
stare. Stephen--Stephen of all people--in such a state....

His mother turned and came towards her.

‘But--Virginia?’ said Catherine, her lips trembling, for if Stephen
could be reduced to this, what dreadful thing was happening to Virginia?

Mrs. Colquhoun took her face in both hands and kissed her,--really
kissed her. Her eyes were very bright, with red rims. She had evidently
been crying, and she had the look of those who have reached the end of
their tether.

‘All is going well I believe now with Virginia,’ she said. ‘I tell him
so, and he won’t listen. Do you think you could make him listen? There
was a terrible time before the second doctor came and put her under an
anæsthetic, and it upset him so that he--well, you see.’

And she made a gesture, half shame, half anger, and wholly unhappy,
towards the figure leaning against the sofa.

Then she added, her bright, tear-stained eyes on Catherine’s, ‘To think
that my son and God’s priest should go to pieces like this--should be
unable in a crisis to do his duty--should lose--should lose----’

She broke off, continuing to stare at Catherine with those bright,
incredulous eyes.

Catherine could only gaze at Stephen in dismay. No wonder Kate
downstairs hadn’t succeeded in saying what she was trying to say about
the master. Stephen, the firm-lipped, the strong denouncer of weakness,
the exhorting calm Christian--what a dreadful thing to happen. She
didn’t know husbands ever collapsed like that. George hadn’t. He had
been anxious and distressed, but he hadn’t moaned. The moaning had been
done, she remembered, exclusively by her. George had been her comfort,
her rock. What comfort could Virginia have got that day out of Stephen?
And it was after all Virginia who was having the baby.

‘Couldn’t the doctors give him something?’ she asked, feeling that poor
Stephen ought certainly too to be given a little chloroform to help him
through his hours of misery,--anything rather than that he should be
left lying there suffering like that.

‘I asked them to give him a soothing draught,’ said Mrs. Colquhoun, ‘and
they only told me to take him away. Of course I took him away, for he
was killing Virginia, and here I’ve been shut up with him ever since.
Catherine----‘it was the first time she had called her that--‘I don’t
remember in our day----? I don’t remember that my husband----?’ And she
broke off, and stared at her with her bright, exhausted eyes.

‘George didn’t,’ said Catherine hesitatingly, ‘but I think--I think
Stephen loves Virginia more than perhaps----’

‘A nice way of loving,’ remarked Mrs. Colquhoun, who had had a terrible
day shut up with Stephen, and whose distress for him was by now shot
with indignation.

‘Oh, but he can’t help it. Dear Mrs. Colquhoun----’

‘Call me Milly.’

Milly? These barriers tumbling down all round before the blast of a
crisis bewildered Catherine. Stephen, who had been so firmly entrenched
behind example and precept, lying exposed there, so helplessly and
completely exposed that she hardly liked to look at him, hardly liked
either him or his mother to know she was there, because of later on when
he should be normal again and they both might be humiliated by the
recollection, and Mrs. Colquhoun, not only turning on her adored son
but flinging away her insincerities and kissing her with almost eager
affection and demanding to be called Milly. Strange by-products of
Virginia’s suffering, thought Catherine. ‘I must go to her,’ she said,
going towards the door.

‘Dear Catherine,’ said Mrs. Colquhoun holding her back, ‘they won’t let
you in. It will soon be over now. And what will she say,’ she added,
turning to Stephen and raising her voice, ‘what will she say when she
asks for her husband and he is incapable of coming to her side?’

But Stephen was far beyond reacting to any twittings.

‘Oh, but he will be--won’t you, Stephen,’ said Catherine. ‘You’re going
to be so happy, you and Virginia--so, so happy, and forget all about
this----’

And she ran over to him, and stooped down and kissed him.

But Stephen only moaned.

‘He ought to go to bed and have a doctor,’ Catherine said, looking round
at Mrs. Colquhoun.

‘<i>He</i> isn’t having the baby,’ was Mrs. Colquhoun’s reply.

‘No--but mental agony is worse than physical,’ said Catherine.

‘Not if it’s babies,’ said Mrs. Colquhoun firmly.

What a strange night that was. What a night of mixed emotions,--great
fear, deep pity immense surprise; and what a clearing up in Catherine’s
mind of nonsense, of her own private follies. None of the three in that
room had yet in their lives been up against this kind of reality, this
stark, ruthless reality, before. There were hours and hours to think in,
hours and hours to feel in. A few yards away lay Virginia, hanging
between life and death. From her room came no moans. An august silence
enveloped it, as of issues too great and solemn being settled within for
any crying out. It was the slowest, most difficult of births. She
herself was far away, profoundly unconcerned, wrapped in the
mercifulness of unconsciousness; but how long could even the youngest,
strongest body stand this awful strain on it?

The two women away in that spare-room on the other side of the house
didn’t dare let themselves even look at this question. It lay cold and
heavy on the heart of each, and they turned away their mind’s eyes and
busied themselves as best they could,--Catherine with stroking Stephen
and murmuring words of comfort in his ear, of which he took no notice,
and Mrs. Colquhoun with making tea.

All night long poor Mrs. Colquhoun, herself within an ace of collapse,
made fresh tea at short intervals, finding in the rattle of the cups and
saucers a way of drowning some at least of her unhappy son’s
nerve-racking moans and her own thoughts. She couldn’t and wouldn’t
contemplate the possibility of anything happening to Virginia; she
insisted to herself that in that quarter all was well. Two doctors and a
skilled nurse, two doctors and a skilled nurse, she kept on repeating in
her mind, her shaking hands upsetting the cups. A difficult birth, of
course, and a long one, but that was nothing unusual with the first
child. Nonsense, nonsense, to let even the edge of an imagining of
possible disaster slide into one’s mind. One had quite enough to think
of without that, with Stephen lying there disgracing himself and her,
denying in effect his God, and certainly abandoning his manhood,--for
Virginia’s screams before the anæsthetist arrived, those awful, awful
screams coming from his gentle wife, had sent the unhappy Stephen, after
two hours of having to listen to them, out of his mind. He had killed
her, he was her murderer, he had killed her, killed her with his
love....

‘Nonsense,’ his mother had said in her most matter-of-fact way, on his
shouting out things like this for every one to hear,--really excessively
shocking things when one remembered all the young maids in the house;
and then with trembling hands she had led him into this distant room,
and he had thrown himself down where he had ever since been lying, and
had said no word more, but only ceaselessly moaned.

And Mrs. Colquhoun, who had never in her life overwhelmingly loved, and
never till that day known she possessed any nerves, looked on at first
helplessly, and then indignantly, and the whole time uncomprehendingly.
It was all very well, and of course a husband was anxious on such
occasions, and should and was expected to show feeling, but within
decent limits. These limits were not decent. Anything but. What would
the parish say if it saw him? What did the servants say, who could hear
him?

She put aspirin into his heedless mouth, and asked him severely if he
had forgotten God. She tried to twit him into manliness and
priestliness. She actually shook him once, believing that counter-shocks
were good for the nerves. Useless, all useless; and by the time
Catherine arrived she herself was very nearly done for.

But tea, the domesticities,--natural, reassuring little
activities,--were, she found, the only real props. Not prayer. Strange,
not once did she wish to pray. If Stephen had prayed it would have been
a good thing, but it wouldn’t have been a good thing for her to pray. No
emotions, if you please, she admonished herself several times aloud--it
froze Catherine’s blood to hear her--duty, duty, duty; the making of tea
to sustain the body, to compose the nerves by the routine of it,--this
was the real anchor. She would gladly have gone round with a duster,
dusting the ornaments that collect in spare-rooms, but to dust at night
seemed too highly unnatural to offer a hope of forgetfulness.

So she kept on ringing the bell for fresh hot water and more cups, and
just the sight of the housemaid in her cap and apron at the door--she
wasn’t allowed inside, because of Stephen--seemed to hold Mrs. Colquhoun
down to sanity. There were other things in the world besides suffering;
there were next mornings, and the precious routine of life with its
baths and breakfasts and orders to the cook,--how she longed for that,
how she longed to be back in her safe shell again, with everything
normal about her, and Stephen in his senses, and the sickening load of
fear on her heart lifted away and forgotten.

A cup was chipped. She held it to the light. Kate, of course, who really
was most careless with china. At that rate Virginia would soon have none
left.

She rang the bell and sent the housemaid for Kate, and when she came,
her cap a little crooked and her hair a little wispy, Mrs. Colquhoun
took the cup out into the passage to her and scolded her soundly, and it
did them both good, and Kate was so much restored by this breath of
normality that she was able to ask in a whisper how the master was, and
Mrs. Colquhoun, dropping unconsciously into the very language of the
occasion, replied that he was doing nicely.

And indeed Stephen’s moans seemed less since Catherine had taken his
head on her lap and was stroking and patting him. She stroked and patted
without stopping, and every now and then bent down and murmured words of
encouragement in his ear, or else, when she found no words because her
own heart was so full of fear, simply bent down and kissed him. Did he
hear? Did he feel? She couldn’t tell; but she thought his moans grew
quieter, and that he seemed dimly conscious of comfort when her hand
passed softly down his sunken face.

‘You’ll wear yourself out,’ said Mrs. Colquhoun, pursing her lips to
keep them from quivering.

‘It comforts me,’ said Catherine.

‘You’d much better have another cup of tea.’

‘How passionately he loves her. I didn’t quite realise----’

‘Loving passionately seems to get people into nice messes,’ said Mrs.
Colquhoun grimly.

‘I suppose one really oughtn’t to love too much,’ said Catherine.

‘I consider Stephen preached himself into it. That course of sermons
last Lent--you remember? I thought at the time that he was almost too
eloquent. It sometimes very nearly wasn’t quite what one wishes a parish
to hear. The love he talked about--well, he started with St. John’s
ideas, but soon got away from them into something else. People,
especially the servants, listened open-mouthed. They wouldn’t have done
that if there hadn’t been something else in it besides the Bible. And
you know, Catherine, one can talk oneself into anything, and in my
opinion that is what Stephen did. And he came to think so much and so
often of that side of life that he forgot moderation, and here he is.
This is his punishment, and my disgrace.’

‘No, no,’ said Catherine soothingly.

‘It is--it is.’ And Mrs. Colquhoun, who had kept up so courageously till
then, bowed her head over the teatray and wept.

It would be useless, Catherine felt, to argue with poor Mrs. Colquhoun
about love, so gently laying Stephen’s head on a cushion she went over
to her and sat down beside her and put her arm round her and began to
stroke her too, and murmur soothing words.

How strange it was, this night of fear spent stroking the Colquhouns.
That queer imp that sits in a detached corner of one’s mind refusing to
be serious just when it most should be, actually forced her at this
moment, when hope was at its faintest, to laugh inside herself at the
odd turn her relationship with Stephen and his mother had taken. The
collapsed Colquhouns; the towers of strength laid low; and she, the
disapproved of, the sinner as Stephen thought, and perhaps he had told
his mother and she thought it too, being their only support and
comforter. The collapsed Colquhouns. It really was funny--very
funny--very fun....

Why, what was this? She too crying?

Horrified she jumped up, and hurried across to the window and flung it
open as far as it would go, and stood at it with her face to the damp
night air and struggled with herself, squeezing back those ill-timed
tears; and as she stood there the sluggish air suddenly became a
draught, and turning quickly she found the door had been opened, and a
strange man was framed in it, with Kate in the background ushering him
in.

One of the doctors. She flew to him. He was very red, with drops of
sweat on his forehead.

‘Where’s that husband?’ he asked, looking round the room and speaking
cheerfully, though his eyes were serious. ‘Oh--I see. Still no good to
us. I never saw such a fellow. He might be having the baby himself.
Well, his mother, then. Oh dear--what’s this? Tears? Come, come,’ he
said, laying his hand on Mrs. Colquhoun’s shoulder very kindly, and
looking at Catherine. ‘Are you the other grandmother?’ he asked,
smiling.

‘Grandmother?’

‘A whacking boy. The biggest I’ve brought into the world for a long
time.’




XVIII


When Virginia recovered consciousness she lay for some time with her
eyes shut, frowning. She seemed to have come back from somewhere very
far away, and it had been difficult, so difficult to come back at all,
and she was tired out with the effort. Where had she been? She lay
trying to remember, her arms straight down by her side, the palms of her
hands upturned as if some one had flung them there like that and she had
been too indifferent to move them. Her hair, in two thick plaits, was
neatly arranged, a plait drawn down over each shoulder, and her bed was
spotless and tidy.

She opened her heavy eyes presently, and saw her mother sitting by the
pillow.

Her mother. She shut her eyes again and thought this over; but it tired
her to think, and she didn’t bother much with it. Her mother was sitting
quite still, holding a plait of some one’s dark hair against her lips
and kissing it. There was another person in the room, moving about
without any noise, dressed in white. Who?

A glimmer of recollection stole into Virginia’s mind. Without bothering
to open her eyes--the exertion of doing that was so enormous--she
managed to murmur, ‘Have I--had my baby?’ And her mother took her hand
and kissed it and told her she had, and that it was a boy. A beautiful
boy, her mother said.

She thought this over too, frowning with the effort. A beautiful boy.
That was the opposite of a beautiful girl. And the nurse--of course,
that white thing was the nurse--came and held a cup to her mouth and
made her drink something.

Then she lay quiet again, with her eyes shut. She had had her baby. A
beautiful boy. The news in no way stirred her; it tired her.

Presently there came another flicker of recollection. Stephen. That was
her husband. Where was he?

With an effort she opened her eyes and looked languidly at her mother.
How hard it was to pronounce that St. Such an exertion. But she managed
it, and got out, ‘Stephen----?’

Her mother, kissing her hand again, said he had a little cold, and was
staying in bed.

Stephen had a little cold, and was staying in bed. This news in no way
stirred her either. She lay quite apathetic, her arms straight by her
side, her hands palm upwards on the counterpane. Stephen; the baby; her
mother; a profound indifference to them all filled her mind, still dark
with the shadows of that great dim place she had clambered out of,
clambered and clambered till her body was bruised and sore from head to
foot, and so dead tired--so dead, dead tired.

Some one else came into the room. A man. Perhaps a doctor, for he took
up her hand and held it in his for a while, and then said something to
the nurse, who came and raised her head and gave her another
drink,--rather like what she remembered brandy used to be.

Brandy in bed. Wasn’t that--what was the word?--yes, queer. Wasn’t that
queer, to drink brandy in bed.

But it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered. It was nice when nothing
mattered. So peaceful and quiet; so, so peaceful and quiet. Like
floating on one’s back in calm water on a summer afternoon, looking up
at the blue sky, and every now and then letting one’s head sink a
little,--just a little, so that the cool water rippled over one’s ears;
or letting it sink a little more,--just a little more, so that the cool
water rippled over one’s face; and one sank and sank; gently deeper;
gently deeper; till at last there was nothing but sleep.




XIX


When Christopher arrived in Hertford Street from Scotland a week later,
Mrs. Mitcham met him in the hall of the flat. He knew nothing of what
had happened at Chickover. Catherine had written him a brief scribble
the day she left, telling him she was going to Virginia, and as he
hadn’t had a word since, and found his holiday, which he anyhow hated,
completely intolerable directly she cut him off from her by silence, he
decided it was no longer to be endured; and flinging his things
together, and remarking to Lewes that he was fed up, he started for
London, getting there hard on the heels of a telegram he had sent Mrs.
Mitcham.

She came into the hall when she heard his latchkey in the door. Her face
looked longer than ever, and her clothes seemed blacker.

‘Oh, sir,’ she began at once, taking his coat from him, ‘isn’t it
dreadful.’

‘What is?’ asked Christopher, twisting round and looking at her, quick
fear in his heart.

‘Miss Virginia----’

He breathed again. For a terrible moment he had thought----

‘What has <i>she</i> been doing?’ he asked, suddenly indifferent, for the
having of babies hadn’t entered his consciousness as anything
dangerous; if it were, the whole place wouldn’t be littered with them.

Mrs. Mitcham stared at him out of red-rimmed eyes.

‘Doing, sir?’ she repeated, stung by the careless way he spoke; and for
the first and last time in her life sarcastic, she said with dignified
rebuke, ‘Only dying, sir.’

It was his turn to stare, his eyes very wide open, while dismay, as all
that this dying meant became clear to him, stole into them. ‘Dying? That
girl? Do you mean----’

‘Dead, sir,’ said Mrs. Mitcham, her head well up, her gaze, full of
rebuke and dignity, on his.

Too late to go down that night. No trains any more that night. But there
was the motor-bicycle. Catherine--Catherine in grief--he must get to her
somehow....

And once again Christopher rushed westwards to Catherine. Through the
night he rushed in what seemed great jerks of speed interrupted by
things going wrong, every conceivable thing going wrong, as if all hell
and all its devils were in league to trip him up and force him each few
miles to stand aside and look on impotently while the hours, not he,
flew past.

She hadn’t sent for him. She was suffering and away, and hadn’t sent for
him. But he knew why. It was because she couldn’t bear, after all the
things he had said about Virginia, to smite him with the fact of her
death. Or else she herself was so violently hit that she had been
stunned into that strange state people got into when death was about,
and thought no longer of what was left, of all the warmth and happiness
life still went on being full of, but only of what was gone.

But whatever she was feeling or not able to feel, she was his, his wife,
to help and comfort; and if she was so much numbed that help and
comfort couldn’t reach her, he would wait by her side till she woke up
again. What could it be like down there, he asked himself as the black
trees and hedges streamed past him, what could it possibly be like for
Catherine, shut up in that unhappy house, with young Virginia dead? That
girl dead. Younger by years than himself. And her husband.... ‘Oh,
Lord--my Catherine,’ he thought, tearing along faster and faster, ‘I
must get her out of it--get her home--love her back to life----’

Pictures of her flashed vivid in his mind, lovely little pictures, such
as had haunted him with increasing frequency the longer his holiday
without her dragged on; and he saw her in them with the eye of starved
passion, a most lovely little Catherine, far, far prettier than she had
ever been in her prettiest days,--so sweet with her soft white skin, so
sweet with her soft dark hair, so sweet with her soft grey eyes, and her
face lit up with love,--love all and only for him. And he who had
thought, those last days before Scotland, that there was too much love
about! He all but swerved into a ditch when he remembered this piece of
incredible folly. Well, he knew now what life was like for him away from
her: it was like being lost in the frozen dark.

He got to Chickover about five in the morning, just as the grey light
was beginning to creep among the trees. He couldn’t go and rouse that
sad house so early, so he stopped in the village and managed, after much
difficulty, to induce the inn to open and let him in, and give him water
and a towel and promise him tea when the hour should have become more
decent; and then he lay down on the horsehair sofa in the parlour and
tried to sleep.

But how sleep, when he was at last so near Catherine? Just the thought
of seeing her again, of looking into her eyes after their four weeks’
separation, was enough to banish sleep; and then there was the anxiety
about her, the knowledge that she must be crushed with sorrow, the
effort to imagine life there with that poor devil of a husband....

At half-past seven he began to urge on breakfast, ringing the bell and
going out into the beer-smelling passage and calling. With all his
efforts, however, he couldn’t get anything even started till after
eight, when a sleepy girl came downstairs and put a dirty cloth on the
table and a knife or two.

He went out into the road and walked up and down while the table was
being laid. He wouldn’t question any one there, though they all of
course could have told him about Virginia’s death and what was happening
at the house. And they, supposing he was a stranger,--as indeed he was
and hoped for ever to be in regard to Chickover--did not of themselves
begin to talk.

He knew nothing; neither when she died, nor when she was buried. Perhaps
she hadn’t been buried yet, and in that case he wouldn’t be able to get
Catherine away, as he had hoped, that very day. He found himself trying
not to think of Virginia,--he owed her so many apologies! But only
because she was dead. Who could have supposed she would die, and put
him, by doing that, in the wrong? One had to talk as one felt at the
moment, and it wasn’t possible to shape one’s remarks with an eye to the
possibility of their subject dying. Yet Christopher was very sorry, and
also sore. He felt he had been a brute, but he also felt she had taken
an unfair advantage of him.

He switched his thoughts off her as much as he could. Poor little thing.
And such fine weather, too,--such a good day to be alive on; for by this
time the September sun was flooding Virginia’s village, and the
dew-drenched asters in the cottage gardens were glittering in the light.
Poor little thing. And poor devil of a husband. How well he could
understand <i>his</i> misery. God, if anything were to happen to Catherine!

He drank some tepid tea and ate some unpleasant bread and
butter--Stephen evidently hadn’t succeeded in making the village
innkeeper good, anyhow--and then, feeling extraordinarily agitated, a
mixture of palpitating love and excitement and reluctance and fear, and
all of it shot with distress because of Virginia, he started off through
the park, cutting across the grass, going round along the back of the
kitchen-garden wall to the lodge gates, and walking up the avenue like
any other respectful sympathetic early caller; and when he turned the
bend and got to the point where one first saw the house he gave a great
sigh of thankfulness, for the blinds were up. The poor little thing’s
funeral was over, then, and at least he wasn’t going to tumble, as he
had secretly feared, into the middle of that.

But if it was over, why hadn’t Catherine sent for him? Or come home? Or
at least written? He remembered, however, that she supposed he was in
Scotland, and of course she would have written to him there; and,
consoled, he went on up the avenue whose very trees seemed sad, with
their yellowing leaves slowly fluttering to the ground at every little
puff of wind.

The front door was open, and the drawing-room door on the other side of
the hall was open too, so that while he stood waiting after ringing the
bell he could see right through to the sunny terrace and garden. The
house was very silent. He could hear no sounds at all, except somewhere,
away round behind the stables, the quacking of a distant duck. Wasn’t
anybody having breakfast? Were they still asleep? If Catherine were
still asleep he could go up to her,--not like the last time when he came
to this place to fetch her, and had to wait in the drawing-room, a
stranger still, a suppliant without any rights.

Kate the parlour-maid appeared. She knew of course, directly she saw
him, that this was the young gentleman Mrs. Cumfrit had married--there
had been talk enough about that at the time in the servants’ hall--and
the ghost of a smile lifted the solemnity of her face, for an ordinary,
healthy young gentleman was refreshing to eyes that for the last week
had witnessed only woe.

‘The ladies are not down yet, sir,’ she said in a subdued voice, showing
him, or rather trying to show him, for he wouldn’t go, into the
drawing-room.

‘The ladies?’ repeated Christopher, not subduing his voice, and the
house, for so many days hushed, quivered into life again at the vigour
of it.

‘Mr. Colquhoun’s mother is staying here, sir,’ said Kate, dropping her
voice to a whisper so as to damp him down to the proper key of quiet.
‘Mr. Colquhoun is still very ill, but the doctor thinks he’ll be quite
himself again when he is able to notice the baby. If you’ll wait in
here, sir,’ she continued, making another attempt to get him into the
drawing-room, ‘I’ll go and tell the ladies.’

‘I’m not going to wait anywhere,’ said Christopher. ‘I’m going up to my
wife. Show me the way.’

Yes, it was refreshing to see an alive gentleman again, and a nice
change from the poor master; though the master, of course, was behaving
in quite the proper way, taking his loss as a true widower should, and
taking it so hard that he had to have a doctor and be kept in bed. The
whole village was proud of him; yet for all that it was pleasant to hear
a healthy gentleman’s voice again, talking loud and masterfully, and
Kate, pleased to have to obey, went up the stairs almost with her
ordinary brisk tread, instead of the tiptoes she had got into the habit
of.

Christopher followed, his heart beating loud. She led him down a broad
passage to what appeared to be the furthermost end of the house, and as
they proceeded along it a noise he had begun to hear when he turned the
corner from the landing got bigger and bigger, seeming to swell at him
till at last it was prodigious.

The baby. Crying. He hoped repenting of the damage it had already found
time to do in its brief existence. But he had no thoughts to spare for
babies at that moment, and when Kate stopped at the very door the cries
were coming out of, he waved her on impatiently.

‘Good God,’ he said, ‘you don’t suppose I want to see the baby?’

She only smiled at him and knocked at the door. ‘It’s a beautiful baby,’
she said, with that odd look of satisfied pride and satisfied hunger
that women, he had noticed, when they get near very small babies seem to
have.

‘Hang the baby--take me to my wife,’ he commanded.

‘She’s here, sir,’ Kate answered, opening the door on some one’s calling
out, above the noise, that she was to come in.

It was Mrs. Colquhoun’s voice. He recognised it, and drew back quickly.

No--he’d be hanged if he’d go in there and meet Catherine in a nursery,
with the nurse and the baby and Mrs. Colquhoun all looking on. But he
didn’t draw back so quickly that he hadn’t caught a glimpse of the room,
and seen a bath on two chairs in front of a bright fire, and three women
bending over it, one in white and two in black, and all of them talking
at once to that which was in the bath, while its cries rose ever louder
and more piercing.

Absorbed, the women were; absorbed to the exclusion of every wish,
grief, longing, or other love, he thought, swift hot jealousy flashing
into his heart. He felt Catherine ought somehow to have known he was
there, been at once conscious of him the minute he set foot in the
house. He would have been conscious of her all right the very instant
she got under the same roof; of that he was absolutely certain. Instead
of that, there was that absorbed back, just as though she had never
married, never passionately loved--every bit as absorbed as the other
one’s, as Mrs. Colquhoun’s, who was an old woman with no love left in
her life except what she could wring out of some baby. And whether it
was because they were both in the same attitude and clothes he couldn’t
tell, but his impression had been the same of them both--a quick
impression, before he had time to think, of a black cluster of grizzled
women.

Grizzled? What an extraordinarily horrid word, he thought, to come into
his mind. How had it got there?

‘Shut that door!’ called out Mrs. Colquhoun’s voice above the baby’s
cries. ‘Don’t you see you are making a draught?’

Kate looked round hesitatingly at Christopher.

‘Come in and shut that door!’ called out Mrs. Colquhoun still louder.

Kate went in, shutting it behind her, and Christopher waited, standing
up stiff against the wall.

He hadn’t expected this. No, it was the last thing he had expected. And
now when Catherine came to him Kate would be there too, following on her
heels; and was it to be a handshake, then, or a perfunctory marital kiss
in the presence of a servant, their sacred, blessed moment of reunion?

But it was not to be quite like that, for though somebody came out and
Kate came with her, somebody small who exclaimed, ‘Oh Chris----!’ and
who seemed to think she was Catherine, she wasn’t Catherine, no, no--she
wasn’t and couldn’t be. What came out was a ghost, a pale little
grizzled ghost, which held out its hands and made as if to lift up its
face to be kissed; and when he didn’t kiss it, when he only drew back
and stared at it, drew back at once itself and stood looking at him
without a word.




XX


They stood looking at each other. Kate went away down the passage.
Emptiness was round them, pierced by the baby’s cries through the shut
door of the nursery. Catherine didn’t shrink at all, and let Christopher
look at her as much as he liked, for she had done with everything now
except truth.

‘Catherine----’ he began, in the afraid and bewildered voice of a child
fumbling in the dark.

‘Yes, Chris?’

She made no attempt to go close to him, he made no attempt to go close
to her; and it was strange to Catherine, who couldn’t continually as yet
remember the difference in herself, to be alone with Christopher after
separation, and not instantly be gathered to his heart.

But his face made her remember; in it she could see her own as clearly
as if she were in front of a glass.

‘I had no idea--no idea----’ he stammered.

‘That I could look like this?’

‘That you’ve suffered so horribly, that you loved her so terribly----’

And he knew he ought to take her in his arms and comfort her, and he
couldn’t, because this simply wasn’t Catherine.

‘But it isn’t that only,’ she said,--and hesitated for an instant.

For an instant her heart failed her. Why tell him? After all, all she
had done was for love of him; for a greedy, clutching love it was true,
made up chiefly of vanity and possessiveness and fear, but still love.
Why not forget the whole thing, and let him think she had grown old in a
week from grief?

Creditable and touching explanation. And so nearly true, too, for if
passion had begun the ruin, grief had completed it, and the night and
day of that birth and death, of the agony of Stephen and her own
long-drawn-out torment, had put the finishing touches of age beyond her
age on a face and hair left defenceless to lines and greyness without
Maria Rome’s massage and careful dyes, and anyhow twice as worn and grey
as they had been before she began the exhausting processes of Dr.
Sanguesa.

But she put this aside. She had had enough of nearly truth and the
wretched business of taking him in. How could she go on doing him such
wrongs? She had done him the greatest of wrongs marrying him, of that
she was certain, but at least she would leave off making fools of them
both. Rotten, rotten way of living. Let him see her as she was; and if
his love--how natural that would be at his age, how inevitable--came to
an end, she would set him free.

For in those remarkable hours that followed Virginia’s death, when it
seemed to Catherine as if she had suddenly opened the door out of a dark
passage and gone into a great light room, she saw for the first time
quite plainly; and what she saw in that strange new clearness, that
merciless, yet somehow curiously comforting, clearness, was that love
has to learn to let go, that love if it is real always does let go,
makes no claims, sets free, is content to love without being loved--and
that nothing was worth while, nothing at all in the tiny moment called
life except being good. Simply being good. And though people might argue
as to what precisely being good meant, they knew in their hearts just as
she knew in her heart; and though the young might laugh at this
conviction as so much sodden sentiment, they would, each one of them who
was worth anything, end by thinking exactly that. Impossible to live as
she had lived the last week close up to death and not see this. For four
extraordinary days she had sat in its very presence, watching by the
side of its peace. She knew now. Life was a flicker; the briefest thing,
blown out before one was able to turn round. There was no time in it, no
time in the infinitely precious instant, for anything except just
goodness.

So she said, intent on simple truth, ‘I did deeply love Virginia, and I
have suffered, but I looked very nearly like this before.’

And Christopher, who hadn’t lived these days close up to death, and
hadn’t seen and recognised what she so clearly did, and wasn’t feeling
any of this, was shocked out of his bewilderment by such blasphemy, and
took a quick, almost menacing step forward, as if to silence the ghost
daring to profane his lovely memory.

‘You didn’t look like it--you didn’t!’ he cried. ‘You were my Catherine.
You weren’t this--this----’

He stopped, and stared close into her face. ‘What has become of you?’ he
asked, bewildered again, a dreadful sense of loss cold on his heart.
‘Oh, Catherine--what have you done to yourself?’

‘Why, that’s just it,’ she said, the faintest shadow of a smile
trembling a moment in her eyes. ‘I haven’t done anything to myself.’

‘But your hair--your lovely hair----’

He made agonised motions with his hands.

‘It’s all gone grey because of--of what you’ve been through, you poor,
poor little thing----’

And again he knew he ought to take her in his arms and comfort her, and
again he couldn’t.

‘No, it wasn’t that made it go grey,’ she said. ‘It was grey before,
only I used to have it dyed.’

He stared at her, entirely bewildered. Catherine looking like this, and
saying these things. Why did she say them? Why was she so anxious to
make out that all this had nothing to do with Virginia’s death? Was it
some strange idea of sparing him the pain of being sorry for her? Or was
she so terribly smitten that she was no longer accountable for what she
said? If this was it, then all the more closely should he fold her to
his heart and shield and comfort her, and what a damned scoundrel he was
not to. But he couldn’t. Not yet. Not that minute. Perhaps presently,
when he had got more used....

‘You dyed it?’ he repeated stupidly.

‘Yes. Or rather Maria Rome did.’

‘Maria Rome?’

‘Oh, what does it matter. It makes me sick to think of that old
nonsense. She’s a place in London where they do up women who’ve begun
not to keep. She did me up wonderfully, and at first it very nearly
looked real. But it was such a business, and I was so frightened always,
living like that on the brink of its not being a success, and you
suddenly seeing me. I’m sick, sick just remembering it--now.’

And she laid her hand on his arm, looking up at him with Catherine’s
eyes, Catherine’s beautiful, fatigued eyes.

They were the same,--beautiful as he had always known them, and fatigued
as he had always known them; but how strange to see them in that little
yellow face. Her eyes; all that was left of his Catherine. Yes, and the
voice, the same gentle voice, except that it had a new note of--was it
sensibleness? Sensibleness! Catherine sensible? She had been everything
in the world but that,--obstinate, weak, unaccountable, irrelevant,
determined, impulsive, clinging, passionate, adorable, his own sweet
love, but never sensible.

‘Doesn’t it seem too incredibly little and mean, that sort of lying, any
sort of lying, when <i>this</i> has happened,’ she said, her hand still on
his arm, her eyes very earnestly looking up into his. ‘So
extraordinarily not worth while. And you mustn’t think I’m out of my
mind from shock, Chris,’ she went on, for it was plain from his
expression that that was what he did think, ‘because I’m not. On the
contrary--for the first time I’m in it.’

And as he stared at her, and thought that if this was what she was like
when she was in her mind then how much better and happier for them both
if she had stayed out of it, the baby on the other side of the door was
taken out of its bath, and that which had been cries became yells.

‘For God’s sake let’s go somewhere where there isn’t this infernal
squalling,’ exclaimed Christopher, with a movement so sudden and
exasperated that it shook her hand off his arm.

‘Yes, let us,’ she said, moving away down the passage ahead of him; and
more plainly than ever, when they got to the big windows on the stairs
and she turned the bend of them before him, he could see how yellow she
was, and what a quantity of grey, giving it that terrible grizzled look,
there was in her hair.

Yellow; grizzled; what had she done, what had they done to her, to ruin
her like this, to take his Catherine from him and give him this instead?
It was awful. He was robbed. His world of happiness was smashing to
bits. And he felt such a brute, the lowest of low brutes, not to be able
to love her the same as before, now when she so much must need love,
when she had been having what he could well imagine was a simply hellish
time.

Virginia again, he thought, with a bitterness that shocked him himself.
That girl, even in death spoiling things. For even if it was true what
Catherine insisted on telling him about dyes and doings-up, she never
would have thought it necessary to tell him, to make a clean breast, if
it hadn’t been for Virginia’s death. No; if it hadn’t been for that she
would have gone on as before, doing whatever it was she did to herself,
the results of which anyhow were that he and she were happy. God, how he
hated clean breasts, and the turning over of some imaginary new leaf.
Whenever anything happened out of the ordinary, anything that pulled
women up short and made them do what they called think, they started
wrecking--wrecking everything for themselves and for the people who had
been loving them happily and contentedly, by their urge for the two
arch-destroyers of love, those damned clean breasts and those even more
damned new leaves.

He followed her like an angry, frightened child. How could he know what
she knew? How could he see what she saw? He was where he had always
been, while she had gone on definitely into something else. And there
were no words she could have explained in. If she had tried, all she
could have found to say, with perplexed brows, would have been, ‘But I
<i>know</i>.’

She took him into the garden. They passed her bedroom door on the way,
and he knew it was hers for it was half open, and the room hadn’t been
done yet, and the little slippers he had kissed a hundred times were
lying kicked off on the carpet, the slippers that had belonged to the
real Catherine--or rather, as this one was now insisting, to the
artificial Catherine, but anyhow to his Catherine.

For a moment he was afraid she would take him in there. Ice seemed to
slide down his spine at the thought. But she walked past it as if it had
nothing to do with either of them, and then he was offended.

Out in the garden it was easier to breathe. He couldn’t, in that public
place, with the chance of a gardener appearing at any moment, take her
in his arms, so he didn’t feel quite such a scoundrel for not doing it;
and walking by her side and not looking at her, but just listening to
her voice, he felt less lost; for the voice was the voice of Catherine,
and as long as he didn’t look at her he could believe she was still
there. It was like, in the night, hearing the blessed reassurance of
one’s mother talking, when one was little, and frightened, and alone.

She took him through the garden and out by the wicket-gate into the
park, where rabbits were scuttling across the dewy grass, leaving dark
ribbons along its silver, and the bracken, webbed with morning
gossamer, was already turning brown. And all the way she talked, and all
the way he listened in silence, his eyes fixed straight in front of him.

She told him everything, from that moment of their honeymoon when, from
loving, she had fallen in love, and instantly began to be terrified of
looking old, and her desperate, grotesque efforts to stay young for him,
and his heart, as he heard her voice talking of that time, went to wax
within him, and he had to gaze very steadily at the view ahead lest,
turning to throw his arms round Catherine, his sweetheart, his angel
love, he should see she wasn’t there, but only a ghost was there with
her voice and eyes, and then he mightn’t be able to help bursting out
crying.

‘Is this far enough away from the poor baby?’ she asked, stopping at an
oak-tree, whose huge exposed roots were worn with the numbers of times
she had sat on them in past years during the long, undisturbed summer
afternoons of her placid first marriage. ‘You know,’ she added, sitting
down on the gnarled roots, ‘he’s the most beautiful little baby, and is
going to comfort all poor Stephen’s despair.’

‘But he isn’t going to comfort mine,’ said Christopher, standing with
his eyes fixed on the distant view.

She was silent. Then she said, ‘Is it as bad as that, Chris?’

‘No, no,’ he said quickly, his back to her, ‘I didn’t mean that. You’ll
get well again, and then we’ll----’

‘I don’t see how I can get well if I’m not ill,’ she said gently.

‘Why do you want to take hope from me?’ he answered.

‘I only don’t want any more lies. I shan’t look different again from
what I do now. I shan’t go back, I mean, to what I was. But perhaps
presently--when you’ve had time to get over----’

She hesitated, and then went on humbly,--for she was vividly conscious
of the wrong she had done him, vividly aware that she ought to have
saved him from himself whatever the pressure had been that was brought
to bear on her, however great his misery was at the moment,--‘Presently
I thought perhaps I might somehow make up for what I’ve done. I thought
perhaps I might somehow comfort you----’

She hesitated again. ‘I don’t quite know how, though,’ she said, her
voice more and more humble, ‘but I’d try.’ And then she said, almost in
a whisper, ‘That is, if you will let me.’

‘Let you!’ he exclaimed, stabbed by her humbleness.

‘Yes. And if it’s no good, Chris, and you’d rather not, then of course
I’ll--let you go.’

He turned round quickly. ‘What, in God’s name, do you mean by that?’ he
asked.

‘Set you free,’ said Catherine, doing her best to look up at him
unflinchingly.

He stared at her. ‘How?’ he asked. ‘I don’t understand. In what way, set
me free?’

‘Well, there’s only one way, isn’t there--one way really. I meant,
divorce you.’

He stood staring down at her. Catherine talking of divorcing him.
<i>Catherine.</i>

‘How can you at your age be tied up, go on being married, to some one
like me?’ she asked. ‘It isn’t even decent. And besides--in that flat
together--you might think I--I expected----’

She broke off with a gesture of helplessness, while he still stared at
her.

‘I haven’t an idea how we could manage all the--the details,’ she said,
bowing her head, for she felt she couldn’t endure his stare. ‘It would
<i>hurt</i> so,’ she finished in a whisper.

‘And so you think the solution is to divorce me,’ said Christopher.

‘What else is there to do? You’ve only got to look at me----’

‘Divorce me,’ he said, ‘when we have loved each other so?’

And suddenly he began to shout at her, stamping his foot, while hot
tears rushed into his eyes. ‘Oh you little <i>fool</i>, you little <i>fool</i>!’
he shouted. ‘You’ve always been such a little <i>fool</i>----’

‘But <i>look</i> at me,’ she said desperately, throwing back her head and
flinging out her arms.

‘Oh, for God’s sake, don’t go on like this!’ he cried, dropping on the
ground beside her and burying his face in her lap. Divorce him ...
condemn him again to that awful loneliness ... where he couldn’t hear
her voice....

‘Why couldn’t you go on letting me believe?’ he said, his arms tightly
clutching her knees while he kept his face buried. ‘Why couldn’t you? As
though I cared what you did before! It made us happy, anyhow, and I wish
to God you’d go on doing it. But you’ve only got to get away from this
infernal place to be as you used to be, and you didn’t always go to that
woman, and I fell in love with you just as you were, and why shouldn’t I
love you just as you are?’

‘Because I’m old, and you’re not. Because I’ve grown old since we
married. Because I was too old to be married to some one so young. And
you know I’m old. You see it now. You see it so plainly that you can’t
bear to look at me.’

‘Oh, my God--the stuff, the stuff. I’m your husband, and I’m going to
take care of you. Yes, I am, Catherine--for ever and ever. Useless to
argue. I can’t live without the sound of your voice. I can’t. And how
can you live without me? You couldn’t. You’re the most pitiful little
thing----’

‘I’m not. I’m quite sensible. I haven’t been, but I am now.’

‘Oh, damn being sensible! Be what you were before. Good God, Catherine,’
he went on, hiding his face, clutching her knees, ‘do you think a man
wants his wife to scrub herself with yellow soap as if she were the
kitchen table, and then come all shiny to him and say, “See, I’m the
Truth”? And she isn’t the truth. She’s no more the truth shiny than
powdered--she’s only appearance, anyway, she’s only a symbol--the symbol
of the spirit in her which is what one is really loving the whole
time----’

‘What has happened is much more than that,’ she interrupted.

‘Oh yes, yes--I know. Death. You’re going to tell me that all this sort
of thing seems rot to you now that you’ve been with death----’

‘So it does. And I’ve finished with it.’

‘Oh Lord--women,’ he groaned, burying his face deeper, as if he could
hide from his unhappiness. ‘Do you suppose I haven’t been with death
too, and seen it dozens of times? What do you think I was doing in the
War? But women can’t take the simplest things naturally--and they can’t
take the natural things simply, either. What can be more simple and
natural than death? <i>I</i> didn’t throw away my silk handkerchiefs and
leave off shaving because my friends died----’

‘Chris,’ she interrupted again, ‘you simply don’t understand. You
don’t--know.’

‘I do--I know and understand everything. Why should the ones who didn’t
die behave as though they had? Why should you send our happy life
together to blazes because Virginia is dead? Isn’t that all the more
reason for us who’re still alive to stick firmer than ever to each
other? And instead you talk of divorce. Divorce? Because there’s been
one tragedy there’s to be another? Catherine, don’t you, won’t you,
<i>can’t</i> you see?’

And he lifted his head from her lap and looked at her, tears of anger,
and fear, and love driven back on itself burning in his eyes; and he
caught her crying.

How long had she been crying? Her face was pitiful, all wet with tears,
in its frame of grizzled hair. How long had she been crying quietly up
there, while he was raving, and she at intervals said sensible calm
things?

At the sight of her wet face the anger and the fear died out of him, and
only love was left. She couldn’t do without him. She was a poor,
broken-up little thing, for all her big words about divorce and setting
free. She was his wife, who couldn’t do without him--a poor, broken-up
little thing....

‘I’ve cried so much,’ she said, quickly wiping her eyes, ‘that I believe
I’ve got into the habit of it. I’m ashamed. I hate whimpering.
But--Virginia----’

He got up on to his knees, and at last put his arms round her. ‘Oh my
Catherine,’ he murmured, drawing her head on to his breast and holding
it there. ‘Oh my Catherine----’

An immense desire for self-sacrifice, to fling his life at her feet,
rushed upon Christopher, a passion of longing to give, give everything
and ask nothing in return, to protect, to keep all that could hurt her
away from her for ever.

‘Don’t cry,’ he whispered. ‘Don’t cry. It’s going to be all right. We’re
going to be happy. And if you can’t see that we are, I’ll see for you
till your own eyes are opened again----’

‘But I do see--every time I look in the glass,’ she answered,
instinctively understanding the feeling that was sweeping over him, and
shrinking away from exploiting this that was being thrust upon her of
the quick, uncounting generosity of youth. How would she be able to make
it up to him? She couldn’t, except by loving him with utter
selflessness, and then, when he found out for himself how impossible the
situation was, setting him free. It was the only thing she could do.
Some day he would see himself that it was the only thing.

‘Obstinate, aren’t you,’ he murmured, holding her face close against his
breast, for when he was doing that it was hidden, and it hurt him too
desperately as yet to look at it, it made him too desperately want to
cry himself. Of course presently ... when he had got more used....

‘You’ll have to grow out of that,’ he went on, ‘because we can’t both be
obstinate, and have deadlocks.’

‘No, no--we won’t have deadlocks,’ said Catherine. ‘We’ll just----’

She was going to say, ‘love each other very much,’ but thought that
might sound like making a claim, and stopped.

They were silent for a while, and so motionless that the rabbits began
to think they weren’t there after all, and came lolloping up quite
close.

Then he said very gently, ‘I’m going to take care of you, Catherine.’

And she said, her voice trembling a little, ‘Are you, Chris? I was
thinking that that’s what I’m going to do to you.’

‘All right. We’ll do it to each other, then.’

And they both tried to laugh, but it was a shaky, uncertain laughter,
for they were both afraid.


                                THE END


<i>Printed in Great Britain by</i> <sc>R. & R. Clark, Limited</sc>, <i>Edinburgh</i>