The next 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.
<i>The same stone</i>, 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?--<i>which the
builders refused is become the head-stone of the corner.</i>
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?’
‘Oh <i>no</i>,’ 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, what <i>was</i> she 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.
The verger 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 all <i>hic jacet</i>
inscriptions 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 who <i>I</i> am,’ 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.’
She raised her eyes a moment. ‘I always was,’ she murmured, with, she
hoped, blood-curdling significance.
‘Older?’ repeated Mrs. Colquhoun, whose hearing, as she often told her
friends, was still, she was thankful to say, unimpaired. ‘That, my young
friend, is what may be said daily of us all. No doubt Mrs. Cumfrit
notices a change even in you. Have you not met for a long while?’
‘Not for an eternity,’ said Christopher, in the sort of voice a man
swears with.
A motor-cycle with a side-car was in the road outside the gate, and Mrs.
Colquhoun paused on seeing it.
‘Yours, of course, Mr. Monckton,’ she said. ‘This is the machine in
which you have dropped out of the skies on us. And with a side-car, too.
An empty one, though. I don’t like to think of a young man with an empty
side-car. But perhaps the young lady has merely gone for a little
stroll?’
‘I have brought it to take Mrs. Cumfrit back to London in,’ said
Christopher stiffly; but of what use stiffness, of what use dignity,
when one was being made to look and be such a hopeless fool?
‘Really?’ said Mrs. Colquhoun, excessively surprised. ‘Only, she doesn’t
go back till Monday--do you, dear Mrs. Cumfrit. Ah, no--don’t talk. I
forgot.’
‘Neither do I,’ said Christopher.
‘Really?’ said Mrs. Colquhoun again; and was for a moment, in her turn,
silent.
A side-car seemed to her a highly unsuitable vehicle for a person of
Mrs. Cumfrit’s age. Nor could she recollect, during all the time she
had, off and on, known her, ever having seen her in such a thing.
Instinct here began to warn her, as she afterwards was fond of telling
her friends, that the situation was not quite normal. How far it was
from normal, however, instinct in her case, being that of a decent
elderly woman presently to become a grandmother, was naturally incapable
of guessing.
‘You didn’t tell us, dear Mrs. Cumfrit,’ she said, turning to her pale
and obviously not very well companion, ‘that this was to be your mode of
progress. Delightful, of course, in a way. But personally I should be
afraid of the shaking. Young people don’t feel these things as we do.
Are you, then,’ she continued, turning to Christopher, ‘staying in the
neighbourhood over Sunday?’
‘Yes,’ said Christopher, taking a rug out of the side-car and unfolding
it.
‘I wonder where. You’ll think me an inquisitive old woman, but really I
wonder where. You see, I know this district so well, and there
isn’t--oh, I expect you’re with the Parkers. They usually have a
houseful of young people for the week-end. You’ll enjoy it. The country
round is--What, are you going on, dear Mrs. Cumfrit? Then good-bye for
the present. I shall see you at lunch. Virginia always likes me to come
in on these Lenten Saturdays while Stephen is away. It has become a
ritual. Now take my advice, and lie down for half an hour. I’m a very
sensible person, Mr. Monckton, and know that one can’t go on for ever as
if one were still twenty-five.’
Christopher stepped forward, intercepting Catherine. ‘I’ll drive you
back,’ he said.
‘I’d rather walk,’ she said.
‘Then I’ll walk with you.’ And he threw the rug into the side-car again.
‘What? And leave your motor-cycle and rug and everything unprotected?’
exclaimed Mrs. Colquhoun, who had listened to this brief dialogue with
surprise. Mr. Monckton, whoever he might be, was neither Mrs. Cumfrit’s
son, for she hadn’t got one, nor her nephew, for he had himself said,
with the emphasis of the male young, that he wasn’t, and his
masterfulness seemed accordingly a little unaccountable.
‘You’d better let me drive you,’ he persisted to her pale companion,
taking no notice of this exclamation. ‘You oughtn’t to walk.’
Was he, perhaps, thought Mrs. Colquhoun, a doctor? A young doctor? Mrs.
Cumfrit’s London medical adviser? If so, of course.... Yet even then,
her not having mentioned his expected arrival, and her plan for motoring
up with him on Monday, was odd. Besides, nobody except the very rich had
doctors dangling after them.
‘Let me drive you,’ said the young man again.
And Mrs. Cumfrit said--rather helplessly, Mrs. Colquhoun thought, as if
she were seriously lacking in backbone, ‘Very well.’
It was all extremely odd.
‘Virginia will wonder,’ remarked Mrs. Colquhoun, looking on with a
distinctly pursed expression while her colleague was being rolled into
the rug as carefully as if she were china,--rolled right up to her chin
in it, as if she were going thousands of miles, and at least to Lapland.
‘But no doubt you have told her Mr. Monckton was coming down.’
‘I shall only drive part of the way,’ answered Mrs. Cumfrit--there was a
tinge of colour in her face now, Mrs. Colquhoun noticed; perhaps the
tight rug was choking her--‘but I shall get back quicker like this.’
‘I wonder,’ said Mrs. Colquhoun grimly.
She watched them disappear in a cloud of dust, and then turned to go
home, where she had several things to see to before lunching at the
Manor; but, pausing, she decided that she would walk round into the
village instead, and see if she could meet Stephen. Perhaps he would be
able to explain Mr. Monckton.
And Catherine did not, after all, get back quicker. No sooner was she
off, at what seemed to her a great pace, than she began to have
misgivings about it, for it occurred to her that on her feet she could
go where she liked, but in Christopher’s side-car she would have to go
where he did.
‘That’s the turning,’ she called out--she found she had to speak very
loud to get heard above the din the thing made--pointing to a road to
the right a short distance ahead.
‘Is it?’ Christopher shouted back; and rushed past it.