Stephen came back by the first train next morning, suppressing his
excitement as he got out of the car and on the doorstep saw Virginia,
standing there as usual, in her simple morning frock and fresh neatness,
waiting to welcome him home. Outwardly he looked just a sober,
middle-aged cleric, giving his wife a perfunctory kiss while the
servants brought in his things; inwardly he was thirty at the sight of
her, and twenty at the touch of her. She, suppressing in her turn all
signs of joy, received his greeting with a grave smile, and they both at
once went into his study, and shutting the door fell into each other’s
arms.
‘My wife,’ whispered Stephen.
‘My husband,’ whispered Virginia.
It was their invariable greeting at this blissful Monday morning moment
of reunion. No one would have recognised Stephen who saw him alone with
Virginia; no one would have recognised Virginia who saw her alone with
Stephen. Such are the transformations of love. Catherine kept out of the
way; she went tactfully for a walk. They were to themselves till
lunch-time, and could pour out everything each had been thinking and
feeling and saying and doing since they parted such ages ago, on
Saturday.
Unfortunately this time Virginia had something to pour out which wasn’t
going to give Stephen pleasure. She put it off as long as she could, but
he, made quick by love, soon felt there was something in the background
of her talk, and drawing his finger gently over her forehead, which
usually was serene with purest joy, said, ‘A little pucker. I see the
tiniest pucker. What is it, Virginia love?’
‘Mother,’ said Virginia.
‘Mother? My mother?’
Stephen couldn’t believe it. His mother causing puckers?
‘No. Mine. She’s come.’
‘Come here?’
Stephen was much surprised. And on Saturday night not a word, not an
indication of this intention.
‘Had you asked her?’ he inquired.
‘Oh, Stephen--as though I would without your consent!’
‘No. Of course not, darling. But when----?’
‘Yesterday.’
‘On a Sunday?’
‘Yes. And I’m afraid--oh, Stephen, I do think she doesn’t mean to go
away very soon, because she has brought two trunks.’
Stephen was much moved by this news. He looked at his wife in real
dismay. He considered he was still in his honeymoon. What were three
months? Nothing. To people who loved as he and Virginia loved they were
absolutely nothing, and to have a parent come and interrupt, and
especially a parent to whom the whole place had so recently belonged....
Unfortunate; unfortunate; unfortunate to the last degree.
‘How very odd,’ said Stephen, who till now had regarded his
mother-in-law as a monument of tact; adding, after a pause, ‘Two trunks,
did you say? You counted them, I suppose. Two trunks. That is certainly
a large number. And your mother said nothing at all of this when I dined
with her on Saturday----’
‘I do hope, darling,’ interrupted Virginia anxiously, ‘that you had
enough to eat?’
‘Plenty, plenty,’ said Stephen, waving the recollection of the scrambled
eggs aside. ‘She said no word at all, Virginia. On the contrary, she
assured me she was coming to St. Clement’s to hear me preach last
night.’
‘Oh, Stephen--I simply can’t understand how she could bear to miss
that!’
‘Have you any idea, my love, what made her come down unannounced?’ asked
Stephen, the joy of his homecoming completely clouded over.
‘No, darling. I can’t make it out. It really puzzles me.’
‘You have no theory at all?’
‘None.’
‘Nor any idea as to the length of her proposed stay?’
‘Only the idea of the two trunks. Mother hasn’t said a word, and I can’t
very well ask.’
‘No,’ said Stephen thoughtfully. ‘No.’ And added, ‘It is very
disquieting.’
It was; for he saw clearly what an awkward situation must arise with the
abdicated monarch alongside of the reigning one for any time longer than
a day or two, and also, since nothing particular appeared to have
brought her down, she must have come idly, on an impulse, because she
had nothing else to do,--and to be idle, to drift round, seemed to him
really a great pity for any human being. It led inevitably to mischief.
Fruitful activity was of the first importance for every one, he couldn’t
but think, especially for one’s wife’s mother. But it must take place
somewhere else. That was essential: it must take place somewhere else.
‘Well, perhaps,’ he said, stroking Virginia’s hair, endeavouring to give
and get comfort, ‘in spite of the trunks it will only be for a day or
two. Ladies do take large amounts of luggage about with them.’
Virginia shook her head. ‘Mother doesn’t,’ she said. ‘Each time before
she only brought a bag.’
They were silent. He left off stroking her hair.
Then Stephen pulled himself together. ‘Well, well,’ he said. ‘Come,
come. Whatever it is that happens to us, Virginia love, we must do our
best to bear it, mustn’t we.’
‘Oh, of <i>course</i>, Stephen darling,’ said Virginia. ‘You know I’ll do
whatever you do.’
She laid her head on his breast, and they gave themselves up to those
happy lawful caresses that are at once the joy and the duty of the
married. Exquisite arrangement, Stephen considered, who had been starved
of caresses till middle age, and now, let lawfully loose among them,
found them more delightful than in his most repented-of dreams he had
dared imagine--exquisite arrangement, by which the more you love the
greater is your virtue.
‘After all, my darling,’ he whispered, ‘we have got each other.’
‘Indeed and indeed we have,’ whispered Virginia, clinging to him.
‘My own dear wife,’ murmured Stephen, holding her close.
‘My own darling husband,’ murmured Virginia, blissfully nestling.
Catherine, meanwhile, was hurrying back across muddy fields and many
stiles so as not to be late for lunch. Anxious to leave her
children--was not Stephen by law now also her child? fantastic
thought--to themselves as long as possible, she had rather overdone it,
and walked farther than there was time for, so that at the end her walk
had almost to become a run. Stephen, she felt sure, was a punctual man.
Besides, nobody likes being kept waiting for meals. She hoped they
wouldn’t wait. She hurried and got hot. Her shoes were caked in mud, and
her hair, for the March wind was blowing, wasn’t neat. She hoped to slip
in unseen and arrange herself decently before facing Stephen, but when
she arrived within sight of the house they both, having been standing at
the window ever since the gong went, came out to meet her.
‘Oh, you shouldn’t have!’ she cried, as soon as they were near enough to
hear. ‘You shouldn’t have waited. I’m dreadfully sorry. Am I very late?’
‘Only a quarter of an hour,’ said Stephen courteously--how wonderful he
was, thought Virginia. ‘Nothing at all to worry about. How do you do.
This is an unexpected pleasure.’
‘I hope you don’t mind?’ said Catherine, smiling up at him as they shook
hands. ‘I’ve been impulsive. I came down on a sudden wave of longing to
be with Virginia. You’ll have to teach me self-control, Stephen.’
‘We all need that,’ said Stephen.
He hid his feelings; he contrived to smile; he was wonderful, thought
Virginia.
‘And on my very first day I’m late for lunch,’ said Catherine. ‘I wish
you hadn’t waited.’
The expression ‘my very first day’ seemed to Stephen and Virginia
ominous; nobody spoke of a first day unless there was to be a second, a
third, a fourth, a whole row of days. There was, therefore, a small
pause. Then Stephen said, as politely as if he were a man who wasn’t
hungry and had not had breakfast ever so much earlier than usual, ‘Not
at all’--and Catherine felt, as she had so often felt before, that he
was a little difficult to talk to, and Virginia, who knew how
particularly he disliked being kept waiting for meals, even when he
wasn’t hungry, loved him more than ever.
Indeed, his manner to her mother was perfect, she thought,--so patient,
so--the absurd word did describe it--gentlemanly. And he remained
patient and gentlemanly even when Catherine, in her desire to be quick,
only gave her muddy shoes the briefest rubbing on the mat, so that she
made footmarks on the hall carpet, and Stephen, who was a clean man and
didn’t like footmarks on his carpets, merely said, ‘Kate will bring a
brush.’
Lunch went off very well considering, Virginia thought. It was thanks to
Stephen, of course. He was adorable. He told her mother the news of the
parish, not forgetting anything he thought might interest her about the
people she had known, such as young Andrews breaking his leg at
football, and foolish Daisy Logan leaving her good situation to marry a
cowman and begin her troubles before she need; and afterwards in the
drawing-room, where they had coffee--when she and Stephen were alone
they had it cosily in the study, the darling study, scene of so many
happy private hours--he sent Kate to fetch the plans and estimates, and
went through them with her mother so patiently and carefully, explaining
them infinitely better and more clearly than she had been able to do the
day before, and always in such admirable brief sentences, using five
words where she, with her untrained mind, had used fifty, and making her
mother feel that they liked her to know what they were doing, and wanted
her to share their interests. Her mother was not to feel out in the
cold. Dear Stephen. Virginia glowed with love of him. Who but Stephen
could, in the moment of his own disappointment, think and act with such
absolute sweetness?
Time flew. It was her hour for putting up her feet, but she couldn’t
tear herself away from Stephen and the plans. She sat watching his fine
face--how she loved his thinness, his clean-cut, definite features--bent
over the table, while with his finger he traced the lines her mother was
having explained to her. Her mother looked sleepy. Virginia thought this
queer so early in the day. She had been sleepy the evening before, but
that was natural after the journey and getting up so early. Perhaps she
had walked too far, and tired herself. After all, she wasn’t any longer
young.
‘You see how simply it can be worked,’ said Stephen. ‘You merely turn
this tap--<i>a</i>--and the water flows through <i>b</i> and <i>c</i>, along <i>d</i>, and
round the curve to <i>f</i>, washing out, on its way, the whole of <i>e</i>.’
Her mother murmured something--Virginia thought she said, ‘I’d like to
be <i>e</i>’--and if this was really what she did say, it was evident that
she not only looked sleepy, but was very nearly actually asleep. In
which case Stephen’s pains were all being wasted, and he might just as
well leave off.
‘Not only,’ said Stephen, ‘is this the simplest device of any that have
been submitted, and as far as one can humanly tell absolutely foolproof,
but, as is so often the case with the best, it is also the cheapest.’
There was a long pause. Her mother said nothing. Virginia looked at her,
and it did seem as if she really had gone to sleep.
‘Mother,’ said Virginia gently. She couldn’t bear that Stephen should be
taking all this trouble to interest and inform somebody who wasn’t
awake.
Her mother started and gave herself a little shake and said rather
hastily, ‘I see.’ And then, to save what she felt was a delicate
situation and divert Stephen’s attention from herself--he was looking at
her thoughtfully over the top of his glasses--she pointed to a specially
involuted part of the plan, where pipes seemed twisted in a frenzy, and
asked what happened there, at that knot, at--she bent closer--yes, at
<i>k</i>.
Stephen, simple-minded man, at once with the utmost courtesy and
clearness told her, and before he was half-way through his explanation
Virginia noticed--it was really very queer--her mother’s eyelids
shutting again.
This time she got up a little brusquely; she couldn’t let Stephen’s
kindness and time be wasted in such a manner. ‘It’s my hour for
resting,’ she said, standing gravely at the table, one hand, a red young
hand with a slender wedding ring, resting on her husband’s shoulder. ‘I
suppose I ought to go and lie down.’
Her mother at that moment came to life again. ‘Shall I come and tuck you
up?’ she asked, making a movement as if she were going to accompany her.
‘Sweet of you, mother--but if Stephen doesn’t mind, I thought I’d rest
on the couch in his study to-day. It’s so comfortable.’
‘Certainly,’ said Stephen.
He refrained from calling her his love; he and she both refrained from
any endearments in public,--on principle, as unseemly in a clergyman’s
family, and also because they feared that if once they began they
mightn’t be able to stop, so excessive was their mutual delight, at this
early stage, in lovemaking, and so new were they both at the delicious
game. And, besides this, they were shy, and unable either of them in
their hearts to get away from a queer feeling of guilt, in spite of the
Law and the Church both having shed their awful smiles and blessings on
whatever they might choose to do.
‘Oh, I won’t profane Stephen’s study,’ said her mother, smiling at him.
‘I’ll only just come and tuck you up and then leave you to sleep. Thank
you so much, Stephen,’ she added, turning to him; ‘it has been so good
of you. I think your ideas are marvellous.’
But how many of them had her mother heard, Virginia wondered as, after a
pressure of her husband’s shoulder which meant, ‘Be quick and come to
the study and we can be by ourselves till tea,’ and a brief answering
touch of her hand by his which meant that he’d follow her in five
minutes, she and Catherine walked together down the long, beautiful old
room, while Stephen laid his papers carefully in the wicker tray kept
for the purpose. Very few, surely. Yet her mother spoke
enthusiastically. It did slightly shake one’s belief in a mother who
obviously slept most of the time ideas were being expounded to her, that
she should, with that easy worldly over-emphasis Virginia hadn’t heard
now for three months, that pleasant simulation of an enthusiasm which
Virginia had always, ever since she began really to think, suspected
couldn’t be quite real, declare them marvellous, on waking up.
‘I mustn’t be unfair, though,’ thought Virginia as they went into the
study arm in arm--it was Catherine who had put her arm through
Virginia’s. ‘After all, I explained things yesterday, so mother did know
something of our ideas, even if she didn’t listen to-day. But <i>why</i>
should she be so tired?’
‘Didn’t you sleep well last night, mother?’ she asked, as Catherine
arranged the cushions comfortably for her.
‘Not very well,’ said Catherine, turning a little red and looking oddly
like a child caught out in ill behaviour, thought Virginia.
How strange the way the tables of life turned, and how imperceptibly yet
quickly one changed places. Here was her mother looking just as she was
sure she herself used to look when she was caught out doing wrong things
with the fruit or the jam. But why? Virginia couldn’t think why she
should look so.
‘I shall sleep better when I’ve got more used to the bed,’ said
Catherine, who was unnerved by the knowledge that Stephen’s conversation
did inevitably dispose her to drowsiness, and that Virginia was on the
verge of finding it out.
Used to the bed. Virginia turned this expression over in her mind with
grave eyes fixed on her mother, who was smoothing her skirt over her
ankles.
Used to the bed. It suggested infinity to Virginia. You couldn’t get
used to a bed without practice in spending nights in it; you couldn’t
get used to anything without many repetitions. How she wished she could
be frank with her mother and ask her straight out how long she meant to
stay. But could one ever be frank with either one’s mother or with one’s
guest? And when both were combined! As a daughter she wasn’t able to say
anything, as a hostess she wasn’t able to say anything, and as a
daughter and a hostess rolled into one her muzzling was complete.
Virginia watched her mother gravely as she busied herself making her
comfortable. It was for her mother to give some idea of her intentions,
and she hadn’t said a word.
‘Are you quite comfortable, dearest?’ Catherine asked, kissing the
solemn young face before going away.
‘Quite, thank you. Sweet of you, mother,’ said Virginia, closing her
eyes.
For some reason she suddenly wanted to cry. Things were so contrary; it
was so hard that she and Stephen couldn’t be left alone; yet her mother
was so kind, and one would hate to hurt her. But one’s husband and his
happiness--did not they come first?
Her mother went away, shutting the door softly. Virginia lay listening
for Stephen’s footsteps.
Her forehead had a pucker in it again.
Used to the bed....