O wie lieblich sind die SchuheDemuthsvolle Seelensruhe....
O wie lieblich sind die SchuheDemuthsvolle Seelensruhe....
O wie lieblich sind die SchuheDemuthsvolle 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—Lighten our darkness, we beseech Thee.... 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 handsso 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 thereasoning 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—‘meanproperlove.’
‘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.
Stephencame 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 topour 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 hadregarded 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 anyhuman 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, ofcourse, 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 andestimates, 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—a—and the water flows throughbandc, alongd, and round the curve tof, washing out, on its way, the whole ofe.’
Her mother murmured something—Virginia thought she said, ‘I’d like to bee’—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, atk.
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 heardnow 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. Butwhyshould 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 anythingwithout 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....
Catherinewas 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 hadasked 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 twotête-à-têtetalks 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, andshe 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 alwaystête-à-têtewith 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 hisparishioners 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 experiencesin 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 wouldprobably 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 newrégime.
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 thoughit mattered—as though it mattered.Little children, love one another....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 existingrégime. 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 mistressand 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 ishome. 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 wordhatched, 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 thetête-à-têtewalks 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 sheconsidered 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 feltcuriously 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!’
OnSaturday 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 hismother, 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 knewit 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’treallytrue 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 verynext 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.’
Thenext 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.
The same stone, 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?—which the builders refused is become the head-stone of the corner.
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?’
‘Ohno,’ 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, whatwasshe 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. Theverger 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 allhic jacetinscriptions 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 whoIam,’ 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.’