Mr. Lambton came to supper. He was the curate; and, during these Lenten
Sundays of Stephen’s absence, after evening service supped at the Manor.
Mrs. Colquhoun, it transpired, supped on these occasions too, otherwise,
Virginia pointed out, Mr. Lambton couldn’t have supped, it needing two
women to make one man proper. She didn’t put it quite like this, but
that is how it arrived in Catherine’s mind. On this evening Mrs.
Colquhoun didn’t sup because Catherine’s presence made hers unnecessary;
and by absenting herself when she needn’t have, and thus leaving
Catherine to enjoy her daughter’s society untrammelled, gave her
colleague in the office of mother-in-law a lesson in tact which she
hoped, as she ate her solitary meal at home and didn’t like it, for she
hadn’t been expected back to supper and there was nothing really worth
eating, would not be lost.
Mr. Lambton was young, and kind, and full of reverences. He reverenced
his Rector and his Rector’s wife and his Rector’s mother and his
Rector’s mother-in-law; he was ready to reverence their man-servants and
their maid-servants and anything that was theirs as well. He was not
long from Cambridge, and this was his first curacy.
On the quiet surface of the evening he hardly caused an extra ripple.
He was attentive to both ladies, offering them beet-root salad and
bringing them footstools, and afterwards in the drawing-room he brought
them more footstools. Catherine kept on forgetting he was there; and Mr.
Lambton, having established his Rector’s wife’s mother in an easy-chair
out of a draught, and inquired if she didn’t wish for a shawl--having
discharged, in fact, his duty to the waning generation, forgot in his
turn that she was there, and with Virginia discussed the proposed
improvements, going with a quiet relish through all the papers Catherine
had been taken through that afternoon.
Catherine sat in her chair and dozed. She felt just as old as they made
her. With drowsy wonder she remembered this time yesterday, and the
afternoon at Hampton Court, when she had raced--yes, actually
raced--about the gardens, propelled by Christopher’s firm hand on her
elbow and keeping up with his great strides, laughing, talking, the
blood quick in her veins, the scent of spring in her nostrils, the gay
adoring words of that strange young man in her ears. Mr. Lambton must be
about Christopher’s age, she thought. Yet to Mr. Lambton she was merely
some one, perhaps more accurately something, to be placed carefully in a
chair out of a draught and then left. Which of them was right? It was
most unsettling. Was she the same person to-night as last night? Was she
two persons? If she was only one, which one? Or was she a mere vessel of
receptiveness, a transparent vessel into which other people poured their
view of her, and she instantly reflected the exact colour of their
opinion?
Catherine didn’t like this idea of herself--it seemed to make her
somehow get lost, and she shifted uneasily in her chair. But she didn’t
like anything about herself these days; she was horribly surprised, and
shocked, and confused. After all, one couldn’t get away from the fact
that one was well on in the forties, and supposing that there were
people in the world who did seem able to fall in love with one even
then--silly people, of course; silly, violent people--surely one felt
nothing oneself but a bland and creditable indifference? On the other
hand she didn’t believe she was nearly old enough to be planted among
cushions out of a draught and left. It was very puzzling, and tiresome
too. Here she felt almost rheumatic with age. Last night----
The mere thought of last night woke her up so completely and made her so
angry that she gave the footstool an impatient push with her foot, and
it skidded away along the polished oak floor.
Mr. Lambton looked up from the papers he and Virginia were poring over,
and mildly contemplated the figure by the fire a moment, collecting his
thoughts. Something rather vigorous seemed just to have been done. There
had been a noise, and the footstool was certainly a good way off.
He got up, and went across and replaced it under Catherine’s feet.
‘You’re sure you’re quite comfortable, Mrs. Cumfrit?’ he asked, in much
the same voice with which, when district visiting, he addressed the aged
poor--a hearty, an encouraging, a rather loud voice. ‘You wouldn’t like
another cushion, would you?’
Catherine thanked him, and just to please him and make him feel he was
pleasing her, said she thought another cushion would be very nice
indeed, and let him adjust it with care in what he described, evidently
from his knowledge of where his older parishioners chiefly ached, the
small of her back.
The small of her back. She wanted to laugh. All these elderly places she
seemed to have about her--feet needing supporting on footstools,
shoulders needing sheltering in shawls, backs needing propping with
cushions.... But she didn’t laugh; she sat quiet, having nicely thanked
Mr. Lambton, and on the whole did feel very comfortable like that,
cushioned and foot-stooled, and no demands of any sort being made on
her. It anyhow was peace.
Down here she was still simply somebody’s mother, and it was a restful
state. Except for the last three months she had continually in her life
only been somebody’s something. She had begun by being somebody’s
daughter--such a good little girl; she clearly remembered being a good
little girl who gave no trouble, and played happily for hours together
by herself. Then she passed straight from that to being somebody’s wife;
again a great success, again doing everything that was expected of her
and nothing that wasn’t. Then, when this phase was over, for twelve
years she became exclusively somebody’s mother; but how had she not,
when that too ended, stretched out her arms to the sun and cried out all
to herself, ‘Now I’m going to be me!’
Three months she had had of it, three months of freedom in London; and
friends had seemed to spring up like daisies under her feet, and Mrs.
Mitcham was always making tea, and cigarette ends were always being
emptied out of ash-trays, and some cousins she had in London, who had
cropped up the minute she had got there, brought friends, and these
friends instantly became her friends, and it was a holiday, the three
months, a very happy little holiday as different as possible from
anything she had ever known, in which every one she met was kind and
gay, and nobody in any way restricted her movements, and when she wanted
to be alone and go for her solitary enjoyments, such as music, which she
best loved alone, or visits to Kew to see whether spring wasn’t anywhere
about yet, she could be alone and go, and when she wanted to see people
and talk, she could see them and talk, and there was no clash anywhere
of some one else’s opposing tastes and wishes.
A pleasant life. An amusing, independent, dignified small life; opening
out before her with that other life of faithfully fulfilled duties and
expectations at the back of her like a pillow to rest her conscience on.
She hadn’t had time to arrange anything yet, but she certainly meant to
do good as well as be happy, to find some form of charitable activity
and throw herself into it. She wasn’t going to be idle, to drift into
being one of those numerous ex-wives and mothers, unhappy specialists
out of a job, who roam through their remaining years unprofitably
conversing.
All this had seemed to open out before her like a bland afternoon
landscape, and what had she done? Behaved so idiotically that she had
been forced to run away; and not only run, but not know in the least
when she would be able to go back again.
It was most unfortunate that she should have chanced to meet and make
friends with the one young man in, she supposed, ten millions, who could
be mad enough to fall in love with her and was of an undisciplined
disposition into the bargain. Why, he might have been a quite meek young
man--one of those who worship in secret, reverence from afar, one
controlled by a lifted finger or a flickered eyelash. But nothing
controlled Christopher. He was an elemental force, and he swept her with
him--she had certainly been swept somewhere unusual that brief moment
she became so strangely quiescent in his arms. In his arms! Disgraceful.
It rankled. It gnawed. The only thing to do, with such a memory
scorching one, was to take to one’s heels. But imagine at her age having
to take to any such things. The <i>indignity</i>....
Once more the footstool skidded across the shiny floor.
The heads bent over the table turned towards her inquiringly.
‘Have you the fidgets, mother?’ asked Virginia gravely.
‘I think I’ll go to bed,’ said Catherine, getting up from her cushions.
Mr. Lambton hastened across to help. An odd desire to slap Mr. Lambton
seized her. She blushed that she should wish to.
‘But not before prayers?’ said Virginia, surprised.
‘Oh yes--I forgot prayers,’ said Catherine, slightly ashamed.
Virginia, though, was more ashamed. It did seem to her unfortunate that
her mother should have said that before Mr. Lambton. Bad to forget them,
but worse to say so.
She got up and rang the bell.
‘We’ll have them now, as you’re tired,’ she said.
There usedn’t to be prayers in Catherine’s day, because George in his
day hadn’t liked them, and she had kept things up exactly as he had, so
that it was natural she should forget the new habits, besides finding
it difficult to remember that the Manor was really a rectory now, a
place in which family prayers the last thing at night and the first
thing in the morning were inevitable.
In came the servants, headed by the parlourmaid bearing a tray of
lemonade and soda water, and it seemed to Catherine, watching for the
faces of old friends, that they had been much thinned out. They trickled
in where, in old days, if there had been prayers, they would have
poured. Manifestly they were being rapidly exchanged for cottages. There
was hardly one left to smile furtively at her before settling down with
folded hands and composed vacant face to listen to Mr. Lambton.
He officiated in Stephen’s absence. He did it in a clear tenor. The room
growled with muffled responses. Virginia’s voice firmly led the growls.
They all knelt with their faces to the walls and the soles of their
shoes towards Mr. Lambton. Catherine became very conscious of her shoes,
aware that their high heels were not the heels of the absolutely pure in
heart. Before her mind floated a picture she had once seen of a pair of
German boots that had belonged to a German woman who had been wicked,
but, by the time she wore the boots, was good. They were the very
opposite of the shoes she herself had on at the moment, and below the
picture of them was written:
O wie lieblich sind die Schuhe
Demuthsvolle Seelensruhe....
She wondered what Mr. Lambton would think of them as outward signs of
inward grace, and, if he thought highly, what would he think of hers?
Ashamed, she collected her wandering thoughts; for the words Mr.
Lambton was repeating were so beautiful that they sanctified
everything--himself, herself, the assembled upturned shoe-soles. She
suddenly felt very small and silly, as though she were one of the
commoner insects, hopping irreverently at the feet of some great calm
angel. She laid her cheek on her folded arms and listened attentively to
the lovely words Mr. Lambton was praying--<i>Lighten our darkness, we
beseech Thee</i>.... How often she had heard them; how seldom she had
noticed them. They were more beautiful than music; they were nobler....
Virginia saw--it was her business to see how the servants behaved, and
her glance naturally took in Catherine too--her mother’s attitude, and
hoped that Mr. Lambton didn’t. The only decent way of praying in a
drawing-room was to kneel up straight, hands folded and eyes either shut
or looking at the seat of one’s chair. Her mother was crouching, almost
sitting, on the floor, her arms resting on her chair, her head laid
sideways on her arms. Mothers oughtn’t to do that. A child who was very
tired might, but it would certainly be reproved afterwards. Fortunately
the servants couldn’t see because of their backs, but Mr. Lambton, if he
raised his eyes, wouldn’t be able not to. She hoped he wouldn’t raise
his eyes. How very keenly one felt everything one’s mother did or didn’t
do. Strange how sensitive one became about her when one was grown up,
and how, in some uncomfortable way, responsible.
Prayers were over in ten minutes, the servants filed out, Mr. Lambton,
having drunk some soda water and said what was proper about his evening,
went away, and Virginia, reluctant to go upstairs to her frigid
solitude, came and stood by the fire warming her hands so as to put off
the melancholy moment a little longer, and talked of Stephen.
‘I do so miss him these week-ends,’ she said, strangling a sigh.
Catherine sympathetically stroked her arm.
‘I can so well understand how much one would miss some one one loved as
you love Stephen,’ she said.
(‘Mother,’ thought Virginia, ‘is really very nice, in spite of her queer
ways.’)
‘You’ve no idea,’ she said aloud, her eyes bright with pride, ‘how
wonderful he is.’
(‘Who,’ thought Catherine, ‘could have imagined it. That solemn old
Stephen.’)
‘I’m so glad,’ she said aloud, putting her arm round Virginia. ‘You know
I used to be afraid--I wasn’t quite sure--whether perhaps the difference
in age----’
‘Age!’
Virginia looked down at her mother pityingly. ‘I wish you understood,
mother,’ she said gravely, ‘how little age has to do with it so long as
people love each other. Why, what can it matter? We never think of it.
It simply doesn’t come in. Stephen is Stephen, whatever his age may be.
He never, never could be anything else.’
‘No,’ agreed Catherine rather wistfully, for if Stephen could only be
something else she might find him easier to talk to.
However, that was neither here nor there. He wasn’t Virginia’s husband
in order to talk agreeably to her mother. The great thing was that he
succeeded in bringing complete bliss to his wife. How right the child
had been to insist on marrying him; how unerring was her instinct. What
had she cared for the reasoning of relations, the advice so copiously
given not only by Catherine herself, but by various uncles and cousins,
both on her father’s and mother’s side? And as for the suggestion that
she would look ridiculous going about with a husband old enough to be
her father, she had merely smiled gravely at that and not even
condescended to answer.
‘I wonder,’ said Catherine, pensively gazing into the fire, her cheek
against Virginia’s sleeve, ‘how much happiness has been prevented by
fear.’
‘What fear?’
‘Of people--and especially relations. Their opinion.’
‘I am sure,’ said Virginia, blushing a little, for she wasn’t used to
talking about these things to anybody but Stephen, ‘that one should give
up everything to follow love.’
‘But what love?’
Virginia blushed again. ‘Oh, mother--of course only the right love.’
‘You mean husbands?’
‘Well, of course, mother.’
Virginia blushed a third time. What could her mother imagine she was
thinking of?
She went on with grave shyness: ‘Love--the right love--shouldn’t mind
anything any one in the world says.’
‘I suppose it shouldn’t,’ said Catherine. ‘And yet----’
‘There isn’t any “and yet” in love, mother. Not in real love.’
‘You mean husbands,’ said Catherine again.
‘Well, of course, mother,’ said Virginia, impatiently this time.
‘I suppose there isn’t,’ said Catherine pensively. ‘But still----’
‘There isn’t any “but still” either.’
Before this splendid inexperience, this magnificent unawareness,
Catherine could only be mute; and presently she held up her face to be
kissed, and murmured that she thought she would now go to bed.
Virginia fidgeted. She didn’t seem to want to leave the fire. She raked
out the ashes for quite a long time, and then pushed the chairs back
into their proper places and shook up the cushions.
‘I hate going to bed,’ she said suddenly.
Catherine, who had been watching her sleepily, was surprised awake
again--Virginia had sounded so natural.
‘Do you, darling?’ she asked. ‘Why?’
Virginia looked at her mother a moment, and then fetched the bedroom
candles from the table they had been put ready on, the electric light
being now cut off by Stephen’s wish at half-past ten each night.
She gave Catherine her candle. ‘Didn’t you----’ she began.
‘Didn’t I what?’
‘Hate going to bed when my father was away?’
‘Oh. I see. No, I didn’t. I--I liked being alone.’
They stood looking at each other, their candles lighting up their faces.
Catherine’s face was surprised; Virginia’s immensely earnest.
‘I think that’s very strange, mother,’ she said; and added after a
silence, ‘You do understand, don’t you, that in all I’ve been saying
about--about love, I only’--she blushed for the fourth time--‘mean
<i>proper</i> love.’
‘Oh, quite, darling,’ Catherine hastened to assure her. ‘Husbands.’
And Catherine, not used to bedroom candles, held hers crooked and
dropped some grease on the carpet, and Virginia had the utmost
difficulty in strangling an exclamation. Stephen did so much dislike
grease on the carpets.