On Saturday 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
his mother, 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 knew it 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’t <i>really</i> true 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 very next 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.’