Well, Christopher didn’t want her to; he was only too glad that she
wouldn’t go on. He now thought of George as a narrow man, with a head
shaped like a box and a long upper lip. But she had been right to bring
him out and air him conversationally, once he had been thrust between
them by his own incredible idiocy, and it did seem to have quieted poor
old George down a bit, for he didn’t again leap up unbidden to
Christopher’s tongue. His ghost was laid. The dinner proceeded without
him; and they had begun it so early that, even drawn out to its utmost
limit of innumerable cigarettes and the slowest of coffee-drinking and
sipping of unwanted liqueurs, it couldn’t be made to last beyond nine
o’clock. What can you expect if you will begin before seven, thought the
head waiter, watching the gentleman’s desperate efforts to stay where he
was. Impossible to take her home and be parted from her before ten. It
would be dreadful enough to have to at eleven, but the sheer
horribleness of ten flashed an inspiration into Christopher’s mind: they
would go to <i>The Immortal Hour</i> for whatever was left of it.
So they went, and were in time for the love scene, as well as for the
whole of the last act.
Now, indeed, was Christopher perfectly happy, as he sat beside Catherine
in the thrice-blessed theatre where they had first met and compared the
past with the present. Only a week ago they were there,--together
indeed, but met as usual without his being sure they were going
to meet, and he hadn’t even known where she lived. They were
strangers,--discussing, as strangers would on such an occasion, the
Celtic legends; and George, and Stephen, and the Hertford Street
drawing-room, and even Ned in his car and the fluttering Fanshawes, now
such vivid permanences in his mind, were still sleeping, as far as he
was concerned, in the womb of time. Only a week ago and he had never
touched her, never shaken hands, never said anything at all to her that
could be considered--well, personal. Now he had said many such things;
and although she had been restive over some of them, and although he
knew he must proceed with such prudence as he could manage, yet please
God, he told himself, he’d say many more of them before another week had
passed.
There they sat together, after dining together, and there before her
eyes on the stage was a lesson going on in how most beautifully to make
love. He knew she always thrilled to that scene. Did she, he wondered,
even vaguely take the lesson to heart? Did she at all, even dimly,
think, ‘How marvellous to do that too’? Well, he would bring her
steadily to this place, not leave it to chance any more, but go and
fetch her and bring her to seats taken beforehand, bring her till it did
get through to her consciousness that here was not only an exquisite
thing to watch other people doing, but to go home and do oneself. How
long would it take to get her to that stage? He felt so flaming with
will, so irresistible in his determination, that he never doubted she
would get there; but it might take rather a long time, he thought,
glancing sideways at the little untouchable, ungetatable thing, sitting
so close to him and yet so completely removed. If once she loved him, if
once he could make her begin to love him, then he felt certain she would
love him wonderfully, with a divine extravagance.... He would make her.
He could make her. She wouldn’t be able to resist such a great flame of
love as his.
When it was over she said she wanted to walk home.
‘You can’t walk, it’s too far,’ he said; and signalled to a taxi.
She took no notice of the taxi, and said they would walk part of the
way, and then pick up an omnibus.
‘But you’re tired, you’re tired--you can’t,’ he implored; for what a
finish to his evening, to trudge through slums and then be jolted in a
public conveyance. If only it were raining, if only it weren’t such an
odiously dry fine night!
‘I’m not tired,’ she said, while the merciless lights outside the
theatre made her look tired to ghastliness, ‘and I want to walk through
the old Bloomsbury squares. Then we can get an omnibus in Tottenham
Court Road. See,’ she finished, smiling up at him, ‘how well I know the
ropes of the poor.’
‘What I see is how badly you need some one to take care of you,’ he
said, obliged to do what she wanted, and slouching off beside her, while
she seemed to be walking very fast because she took two steps to his
one.
‘Mrs. Mitcham takes the most careful care of me.’
‘Oh--Mrs. Mitcham. I mean some one with authority. The authority of
love.’
There was a pause. Then Catherine said softly, ‘I’ve had such a pleasant
evening, such a charming evening, and I should hate it to end up with
one of my headaches.’
‘Why? Why?’ he asked, at once anxious. ‘Do you feel like that again?’
‘I do rather.’
‘Then you’ll certainly go home in a taxi,’ he said, looking round for
one.
‘Oh, no--a taxi would be fatal,’ she said quickly, catching his arm as
he raised it to wave to a distant rank. ‘They shake me so. I shall be
all right if we walk along--quietly, not talking much.’
‘Poor little thing,’ he said looking down at her, flooded with
tenderness and drawing her hand through his arm.
‘Not at all a poor little thing,’ she smiled. ‘I’ve been very happy this
evening, and don’t want to end badly. So if you’ll just not talk--just
walk along quietly----’
‘I insist on your taking my arm, then,’ he said.
‘I will at the crossings,’ said Catherine, who had drawn her hand out as
soon as he had drawn it in.
In this way, first on their feet, and then at last, for walking in the
silent streets was anyhow better than being in an omnibus and he went on
and on till she was really tired, in an omnibus, and then again walking,
they reached Hertford Street, and good-night had to be said in the
presence of the night porter.
What an anti-climax, thought Christopher, going home thwarted, and
bitterly disappointed at having been done out of his taxi-drive at the
end.
‘Next time I see him,’ thought Catherine, rubbing the hand he had lately
shaken, ‘I’ll have to tell him about Virginia. It isn’t fair....’
Next time she saw him was the very next day,--a fine Saturday, on which
for the second time running he didn’t go down to his expectant uncle in
Surrey. Instead, having telegraphed to him, he arrived at Hertford
Street in a carefully chosen open taxi directly after lunch, when she
would be sure to be in if she were not lunching somewhere, and picked
her up, carrying her off before she had time to think of objections, to
Hampton Court to look at the crocuses and have tea at the Mitre.
It was fun. The sun shone, the air was soft, spring was at every street
corner piled up gorgeously in baskets, everybody seemed young and gay,
everybody seemed to be going off in twos, laughing, careless, just
enjoying themselves. Why shouldn’t she just enjoy herself too? For this
once? The other women--she had almost said the other girls, but pulled
herself up shocked--who passed on holiday bent, each with her man,
lightly swept her face and Christopher’s with a sort of gay recognition
of their brotherhood and sisterhood, all off together for an afternoon’s
happiness, and when the taxi pulled up in a block of traffic in
Kensington High Street, a flower-seller pushed some violets over the
side and said, ‘Sweet violets, Miss?’ Oh, it was fun. And Christopher
had brought a rug, and tucked her up with immense care, and looked so
happy, so absurdly happy, that she couldn’t possibly spoil things for
him.
She wouldn’t spoil things. Next time she saw him would be heaps soon
enough to tell him about Virginia; and on a wet day, not on a fine
spring afternoon like this. A wet day and indoors: that was the time and
place to tell him. Of course if he became very silly she would tell him
instantly; but as long as he wasn’t--and how could he be in an open
taxi?--as long as he was just happy to be with her and take her out and
walk her round among crocuses and give her tea and bring her home again
tucked in as carefully as if she were some extraordinarily precious
brittle treasure, why should she interfere? It was so amusing to be a
treasure,--yes, and so sweet. Let her be honest with herself--it was
sweet. She hadn’t been a treasure, not a real one, not the kind for whom
things are done by enamoured men, for years,--indeed, not ever; for
George from the first, even before he was one, had behaved like a
husband. He was so much older than she was; and though his devotion was
steady and lasting he had at no time been infatuated. She had been a
treasure, certainly, but of the other kind, the kind that does things
for somebody else. Mrs. Mitcham, on a less glorified scale, was that
type of treasure. She, Catherine, on a more glorified scale, had been
very like Mrs. Mitcham all her life, she thought, making other people
comfortable and happy, and being rewarded by their affection and
dependence.
Also, she had been comfortable and happy herself, undisturbed by
desires, unruffled by yearnings. It had been a sheltered, placid life;
its ways were ways of pleasantness, and its paths were peace. The years
had slipped serenely away in her beautiful country home, undistinguished
years, with nothing in any of them to make them stand out afterwards in
her memory. The pains in them were all little pains, the worries all
little worries. Friendliness, affection, devotion--these things had
accompanied her steps, for she herself was so friendly, so affectionate,
so devoted. Love, except in these mild minor forms, had not so much as
peeped over her rose-grown walls. As for passion, when it leaped out at
her suddenly from a book, or she tumbled on it lurking in music, she
thrilled a moment and quivered a moment, and then immediately subsided
again. Somewhere in the world people felt these things, did these
things, were ruined or exalted for ever by these things; but what
discomfort, what confusion, what trouble! How much better to go quietly
to bed every night with George, to whom she was so much used, and wake
up next morning after placid slumbers, strengthened and refreshed
for----
Sometimes, but very seldom, she paused here and asked, ‘For what?’
Sometimes, but very seldom, it seemed to her as if she spent her whole
life being strengthened and refreshed for an effort that never had to be
made, an adventure that never happened. All those meals,--to what end
was she so carefully, four times a day, nourished? ‘The machine must be
stoked,’ George would say, pressing her to eat, for he believed in
abundant food, ‘or it won’t work.’ More preparations for exertions that
never were made. Nothing but preparations....
Sometimes, but very seldom, she thought like this; then the thought was
lulled to sleep again, lapped quiet by the gentle waves of affection,
devotion, dependence that encircled her. She made people happy; they
made her happy in return. It was excessively simple, excessively easy.
It really appeared that nothing more was needed than good nature. Not to
be cross: was that the secret? As she didn’t know what it was like to
feel cross, to be impelled to behave disagreeably or to want to
criticise anybody, it was all very easy. Wherever she was there seemed
to gather round her a most comfortable atmosphere of sunny calm. So, she
sometimes but very seldom thought, do vegetables flourish in
well-manured kitchen gardens.
George called her throughout his life his little comfort. He had no
trouble with her, ever. His gratitude for this increased as he grew
busier and richer and had to be more and more away from home. To think
of his Catherine, safe and contented, waiting affectionately down in the
country for his return, looking forward, thinking of him, depending on
him for all her comforts as he depended on her for all his joy, filled
him with a satisfaction that never grew stale. His only fear was lest
she should marry disastrously after he was dead. He was so much older.
It was bad to be so much older, and in all likelihood have to
die and leave her. He did what he could to save her by a most
carefully-thought-out will; and when the horrid moment arrived and he
was forced to go, at least he knew his wing would still, in a way,
stretch protectingly over her little head, that he had made her safe
from predatory fortune-hunters by making her poor. The last thing he
did, the very last thing, was solemnly to bless and thank her; and then
with extremest reluctance, for it was a miserable thing to have to do,
George died.
But she didn’t think much about him that afternoon at Hampton Court. He
belonged to so long ago by now--ten years since his death; and
Christopher was careful not to say anything this time that might set her
off in widow-reveries. Nothing here reminded her of George. They had
never been here together. He had never in his life taken her off like
this, for an unpremeditated excursion, in a taxi, to tea at an inn. Of
course he hadn’t. He was her husband. Husbands didn’t. Why should they?
When she and George had wanted airing, they had gone out in their car;
when they had wanted tea, they had had it in their drawing-room; when,
and if, they had wanted crocuses, they had admired them either from the
window or from the safe dryness of a gravel path.
How old she had been then compared to now! She laughed up at
Christopher, who was leading her very fast by the elbow along wet paths
shining in the sun, where the earth and grass smelt so good after
London, out to lawns flung over with their little lovely coat of spring,
their blue and gold and purple embroidered coat; and he laughed back at
her, not asking why she laughed, nor knowing why he laughed, except that
this was bliss.
The times that Christopher on this occasion managed not to seize her in
his arms and tell her how frantically he loved her were not to be
counted. He began counting them, but had to leave off, there were so
many. His self-control amazed him. True he was terrified of offending
her, but his terror was as nothing compared to his love. The wind on the
drive down had whipped colour into her face, and though her eyes, her
dear beautiful grey eyes, homes of kindness and reassurance, still had
that pathetic tiredness, she looked gayer and fresher than he had yet
seen her. She laughed, she talked, she was delighted with all she saw,
she was evidently happy,--happy with him, happy to spend an afternoon
alone with him.
They had the cheerfullest tea in a window of the Mitre, and compared to
them the other people at the other tables were solemn and bored. Not
that they saw any other people; at least Christopher didn’t, for he saw
only Catherine, and he ate watercress and jam and radishes and
rock-cakes quite unconsciously, drinking in every word she said,
laughing, applauding, lost in wonder at what seemed to him evidences of
a most unusual and distinguished intelligence. Once he thought of
Lewes, no doubt at that moment with his long nose in his books, and how
for hours he would prose on, insisting on the essential
uninterestingness and unimportance of a woman’s mind. Fool; ignorant
fool. He should hear Catherine. And even when she said quite ordinary
things, things which in other people would be completely ordinary, the
way she said them, the soft turned-upness of her voice at the ends of
her sentences, the sweet effect as of the cooing of doves he had noticed
the first day, made them sound infinitely more important and arresting
than anything that idiotic Lewes, churning out his brain stuff by the
yard, could ever say. <i>Male and female created He them</i>, thought
Christopher, gazing at her, entranced by the satisfaction, the comfort,
the sense of being completed, her presence gave him. Admirable
arrangement of an all-wise Providence, this making people in pairs. To
have found one’s other half, to be with her after the sterile loneliness
with Lewes and the aridity of his own sketchy and wholly hateful
previous adventures in so-called love, was like coming home.
‘You’re such a little <i>comfort</i>,’ he said, suddenly leaning across the
table and laying his hand on hers.
And she stared at him at this with such startled eyes and turned so very
red that he not only took his hand away again instantly but begged her
pardon.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, turning red in his turn. ‘I didn’t mean to do
that.’
He mustn’t even touch her hand. How was he going to manage? He wasn’t
going to. He couldn’t. He loved her too much. He must get things on a
satisfactory basis. He must propose to her.
He proposed that evening.
Not in the taxi, because it was open, it rattled, and there were
tram-lines. Also she had gone pensive again, and it frightened him to
see how easily she took fright. If her gaiety had been ruffled aside by
that one brief touch of her hand at tea, what mightn’t happen if he
proposed? Suppose she sent him away and wouldn’t ever see him again?
Then he would die; he knew he would. He couldn’t risk such a sentence.
He would wait; he would manage; he would continue to exercise his
wonderful self-control.
But he wasn’t able to after all.
When they got to Hertford Street he reminded her that she had said she
would go with him that evening to <i>The Immortal Hour</i>, and Catherine,
sobered by having heard herself once more called by George’s pet name,
as if George from his grave were using this young man as a trumpet
through which to blow her a warning of the perils of her behaviour,
thanked him in a subdued and rather conscience-stricken voice, and said
she was too tired to go out again.
Christopher’s face fell to a length that was grotesque. ‘But I’ve been
counting on it!’ he cried. ‘And you said----’
‘Well, but this afternoon was instead. And how lovely it was. I think
for a change even more lovely than <i>The Immortal Hour</i>. Those crocuses
with the sun slanting through them----’
‘Never mind the crocuses,’ interrupted Christopher. ‘Do you mean to say
I’m not going to see you again to-night?’
‘Oh, aren’t you a baby,’ she said, unable not to laugh at his face of
despair.
He was walking up the stairs to her flat beside her, her wrap on his
arm. He had refused to give it to her downstairs, because as long as he
held on to that he couldn’t, he judged, be sent away.
‘Don’t laugh at me,’ he said. ‘It isn’t a bit funny to be separated from
you.’
Her face was instantly grave again. ‘I couldn’t go anywhere to-night,’
she said, taking out her latchkey, ‘because I’m beginning to have one of
my headaches.’
‘And I’m beginning to think,’ he said quickly, ‘that those headaches are
things you get directly I say anything a little--anything the least
approaching what I feel. Look here, I’ll do that,’ he went on, taking
the key from her and opening the door. ‘Isn’t it true, now, about the
headaches?’
He was becoming unmanageable. She must apply severity. So she held out
her hand, the door being opened, and said good-bye. ‘Thank you so very
much,’ she said with immense politeness. ‘It has been delicious. You
were too kind to think of it. Thank you a thousand times.’
‘Oh, what an absurd way to talk!’ exclaimed Christopher, brushing away
such stuff with a gesture of scornful impatience. ‘As if we were
strangers--as if we were mere smirking acquaintances!’
‘I have a great opinion,’ said Catherine, becoming very dignified, ‘of
politeness.’
‘And I haven’t. It is a thing you put on as you’re putting it on now to
keep me off, to freeze me--as if you’d ever be able to freeze <i>me</i> when
I’m anywhere near you!’
‘Good-bye,’ said Catherine at this, very cool indeed.
‘No,’ said Christopher. ‘Don’t send me away. It’s so early. It isn’t
seven yet. Think of all the hours till I see you again.’
‘What I do think,’ said Catherine icily, for it was grotesque, this
refusal to go away, he was humiliating her with his absurdities, ‘is
that you say more foolish things in less time than any person I have
ever yet come across.’
‘That’s because,’ said Christopher, ‘you’ve never yet come across any
one who loves you as I love you. There. It’s out. Now what are you going
to do?’
And he folded his arms, and stood waiting with burning eyes for the door
to be shut in his face.
She stood a moment looking at him, a quick flush coming and disappearing
across her face.
‘Oh,’ she then sighed faintly, ‘the <i>silliness</i>....’ For she was right
up against it now. Her amusing little dream of resurrected youth was
over. She was right up against Virginia.
‘Well, what are you going to do?’ asked Christopher, defiant on the
threshold, waiting for his punishment. He knew it would be punishment;
he saw by her face. But whatever it was, if it didn’t kill him he would
bear it, and then, when it was over, begin again.
She moved aside and pointed to the drawing-room door. ‘Ask you to come
in,’ she said.