Betweenthe 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 muchyounger 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 havebeen 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.La chair de femme se nourrit de caresses... 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 ofbeatitude. 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 wasthe 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 thestars 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, soas 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’tfeelpale,’ 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 latelyas 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 herbody 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.
Butthough 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 happiesthuman 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 towalk 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 nowthey 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, readingThe Times, was Mr. Jerrold, the eminent editor of theSaturday Judge, 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 fromThe Timeshe 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 deepinterest. 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’sTimes, 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 hisTimesat 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 withcomplete 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 thatshe 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. Aftera 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.
Hernephew. 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, sotired.
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, andhear 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. Nowthey 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 ofThe Immortal Houras he packed, with gusto he settled the bills and tipped the woman, with gusto he walked, his armthrough 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 ofmarried 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 beenhis, 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.Helooked 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 happeningin 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 hadfallen 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.
Thatevening, sentimentally, they went toThe Immortal Hour. 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.The Immortal Hourwas 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-adoredImmortal Hour.
‘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 overher—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 shookher 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 bya 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.
‘HereisChristopher,’ 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.
Thatyoung man. Thatboy. The boy they had found with Catherine one day, who had rushed out the minute they came in, and Catherine had laughed whenthey asked who on earth he was, and said all she knew about him was that he was certainly mad.Thatfellow. 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.