The noise, the shaking, the wind, made it impossible to say much.
Perhaps up there above her on his perch he really didn’t hear; he anyhow
behaved as if he didn’t. Getting no answer to any of the things she
said, she looked up at him. He was intent, bent forward, his mouth tight
shut, and his hair--he had nothing on his head--blown backwards, shining
in the sun.
The anger died from her face. It was so absurd, what was happening to
her, that she couldn’t be angry. All the trouble she had taken to get
away from him, all she had endured and made Stephen and Virginia endure
that week as a result of it, ending like this, in being caught and
carried off in a side-car! Besides, there was something about him
sitting up there in the sun, something in his expression, at once
triumphant and troubled, determined and anxious, happy and scared, that
brought a smile flickering round the corners of her mouth, which,
however, she carefully buried in her scarf.
And as she settled down into the rug, for she couldn’t do anything at
that moment except go, except rush, except be hurtled, as she gave
herself up to this extraordinary temporary abduction, a queer feeling
stole over her as if she had come in out of the cold into a room with a
bright fire in it. Yes, she had been cold; and with Christopher it was
warm. Absurd as it was, she felt she was with somebody of her own age
again.
They were through the village in a flash. Stephen, still on his way to
the sick-bed he was to console, was caught up and passed without his
knowing who was passing. He jumped aside when he heard the noise of
their approach behind him,--quickly, because he was cautious and they
were close, and without looking at them, because motor-cycles and the
ways of young men who used them were repugnant to him.
Christopher rushed past him with a loud hoot. It sounded defiant.
Catherine gathered, from its special violence, that her son-in-law had
been recognised.
The road beyond Chickover winds sweetly among hills. If one continues on
it long enough, that is for twenty miles or so, one comes to the sea.
This was where Christopher took Catherine that morning, not stopping a
moment, nor slowing down except when prudence demanded, nor speaking a
word till he got there. At the bottom of the steep bit at the end, down
which he went carefully, acutely aware of the preciousness of his
passenger, where between grassy banks the road abruptly finishes in
shingle and the sea, he stopped, got off, and came round to unwind her.
This was the moment he was most afraid of.
She looked so very small, rolled round in the rug like a little bolster,
propped up in the side-car, that his heart misgave him worse than ever.
It had been misgiving him without interruption the whole way, but it
misgave him worse than ever now. He felt she was too small to hurt, to
anger, even to ruffle; that it wasn’t fair; that he ought, if he must
attack, attack a woman more his own size.
And she didn’t say anything. She had, he knew, said a good many things
when they passed that turning, none of which he could hear, but since
then she had been silent. She was silent now; only, over the top of her
scarf, which had got pushed up rather funnily round her ears, her eyes
were fixed on him.
‘There. Here we are,’ he said. ‘We can talk here. If you’ll stand up
I’ll get this thing unwound.’
For a moment he thought she was going to refuse to move, but she said
nothing, and let him help her up. She was so tightly rolled round that
it would have been difficult to move by herself.
He took the rug off, and folded it up busily so as not to have to meet
her eyes, for he was afraid.
‘Help me out,’ she said.
He looked her suddenly in the face. ‘I’m glad I did it, anyhow,’ he
said, flinging back his head.
‘Are you?’ she said.
She held out her hand to be helped. She looked rumpled.
‘Your little coat----’ he murmured, pulling it tidy; and he couldn’t
keep his hand from shaking, because he loved her so--‘your little
coat----’ Then he straightened himself, and looked her in the eyes.
‘Catherine, we’ve got to talk,’ he said.
‘Is that why you’ve brought me here?’
‘Yes,’ said Christopher.
‘Do you imagine I’m going to listen?’
‘Yes,’ said Christopher.
‘You don’t feel at all ashamed?’
‘No,’ said Christopher.
She got out, and walked on to the shingle, and stood with her back to
him, apparently considering the view. It was low tide, and the sea lay
a good way off across wet sands. The sheltered bay was very quiet, and
she could hear larks singing above the grassy banks behind her. Dreadful
how little angry she was. She turned her back so as to hide how little
angry she was. She wasn’t really angry at all, and she knew she ought to
be. Christopher ought to be sent away at once and for ever, but there
were two reasons against that,--one that he wouldn’t go, and the other
that she didn’t want him to. Contrary to all right feeling, to all sense
of what was decent, she was amazingly glad to be with him again. She
didn’t do any of the things she ought to do,--flame with anger, wither
him with rebukes. It was shameful, but there it was: she was amazingly
glad to be with him again.
Christopher, watching her, tried to keep up a stout heart. He had had
such a horrible week that whatever happened now couldn’t anyhow be
worse. And she--well, she didn’t look any the happier for it, for
running away from him, either.
He tried to make his voice sound fearless. ‘Catherine, we must talk,’ he
said. ‘It’s no use turning your back on me and staring at the silly
view. You don’t see it, so why pretend?’
She didn’t move. She was wondering at the way her attitude towards him
had developed in this week. All the while she was so indignant with him
she was really getting used to him, getting used to the idea of him.
Helped, of course, by Stephen. Immensely helped by Stephen, and even by
Virginia.
‘I told you you’d never get away from me,’ he said to the back of her
head, putting all he had of defiance into his voice. But he had so
little; it was bluff, sheer bluff, while his heart was ignominiously in
his boots.
‘Your methods amaze me,’ said Catherine to the view.
‘Why did you run away?’
‘Why did you force me to?’
‘Well, it hasn’t been much good, has it, seeing that here we are again.’
‘It hasn’t been the least good.’
‘It never is, unless it’s done in twos. Then I’m all for it. Don’t
forget that next time, will you. And you might also give the poor devil
who is run from a thought. He has the thinnest time. I suppose if I were
to try and tell you the sort of hell he has to endure you wouldn’t even
understand, you untouched little thing,--you self-sufficing little
thing.’
Silence.
Catherine, gazing at the view, was no doubt taking his remarks in. At
least, he hoped so.
‘Won’t you turn round, Catherine?’ he inquired.
‘Yes, when you’re ready to take me back to Chickover.’
‘I’ll be ready to do that when we’ve arrived at some conclusion. Is it
any use my coming round to your other side? We could talk better if we
could see each other’s faces.’
‘No use at all,’ said Catherine.
‘Because you’d only turn your back on me again?’
‘Yes.’
Silence.
‘Aren’t we silly,’ said Christopher.
‘Idiots,’ said Catherine.
Silence.
‘Of course I know you’re very angry with me,’ said Christopher.
‘I’ve been extraordinarily angry with you the whole week,’ said
Catherine.
‘That’s only because you will persist in being unnatural. You’re the
absurdest little bundle of prejudices, and musty old fears. Why on earth
you can’t simply let yourself go----’
Silence.
She, and letting herself go! She struggled to keep her laughter safe
muffled inside her scarf. She hadn’t laughed since last she was with
Christopher. At Chickover nobody laughed. A serious smile from Virginia,
a bright conventional smile from Mrs. Colquhoun, no smile at all from
Stephen; that was the nearest they got to it. Laughter--one of the most
precious of God’s gifts; the very salt, the very light, the very fresh
air of life; the divine disinfectant, the heavenly purge. Could one ever
be real friends with somebody one didn’t laugh with? Of course one
couldn’t. She and Christopher, they laughed. Oh, she had missed him....
But he was so headlong, he was so dangerous, he must be kept so sternly
within what bounds she could get him to stay in.
She therefore continued to turn her back on him, for her face, she knew,
would betray her.
‘You haven’t been happy down here, that I’ll swear,’ said Christopher.
‘I saw it at once in your little face.’
‘You needn’t swear, because I’m not going to pretend anything. I haven’t
been at all happy. I was very angry with you, and I was--lonely.’
‘Lonely?’
‘Yes. One misses--one’s friends.’
‘But you were up to your eyes in relations.’
Silence.
Then Catherine said, ‘I’m beginning to think relations can’t be
friends--neither blood relations, nor relations by marriage.’
‘Would you,’ asked Christopher after a pause, during which he considered
this remark, ‘call a husband a relation by marriage?’
‘It depends,’ said Catherine, ‘whose.’
‘Yours, of course. You know I mean yours.’
She was quiet a moment, then she said cautiously, ‘I’d call him George.’
He took a quick step forward, before she had time to turn away, and
looked at her.
‘You’re laughing,’ he said, his face lighting up. ‘I felt you were. Why,
I don’t believe you’re angry at all--I believe you’re glad I’ve come.
Catherine, you <i>are</i> glad I’ve come. You’re fed up with Stephen and
Virginia, and the old lady with the profile, and I’ve come as a sort of
relief. Isn’t it true? You <i>are</i> glad?’
‘I think they’re rather fed up, as you put it, with me,’ said Catherine
soberly.
‘Fed up with you? They? That ancient, moulting, feathered tribe?’
He stared at her. ‘Then why do you stay till Monday?’ he asked.
‘Because of Virginia.’
‘You mean she, of course, isn’t fed up.’
‘Yes, she is.’
‘She too?’
He tried to take this in. ‘Then why on earth stay?’ he asked again.
‘Because I don’t want her to know I know she <i>is</i> fed up. Christopher,
how catching your language is----’
His face broadened into a grin. ‘Lord,’ he said, ‘these twists-up one
gets into with relations.’
‘Yes,’ agreed Catherine.
‘Thank heaven I haven’t got any.’
‘Yes,’ agreed Catherine; and added with a faint sigh, her eyes on the
distant sea, ‘I oughtn’t to have come at all.’
‘Well, as though that wasn’t abundantly clear from the first.’
‘I mean, because young people should be left undisturbed.’
‘Young people! Stephen?’
‘Well, young couples.’
‘He isn’t a young couple.’
‘Virginia has made him young. They ought to be left to themselves. It
isn’t that Virginia doesn’t love me--it’s that she loves Stephen more,
and wants to be alone with him.’
‘She’s a horrid girl,’ said Christopher with conviction.
‘She’s mine,’ said Catherine, ‘and I love her. Don’t forget that,
please. It’s very important in my life.’
He took her hands and kissed them. ‘I adore you,’ he said simply.
‘Well, it’s not much good doing that,’ she said.
‘Doing what?’
‘Adoring somebody old enough to be your mother.’
‘Mothers be damned,’ said Christopher.
‘Oh, that’s what I’ve been thinking all the week!’ cried Catherine,--and
then looked so much shocked at herself that Christopher burst out
laughing, and so, after a minute, did she, and they stood there
laughing, he holding both her hands, and happiness coming back to them
in waves.
‘Aren’t we friends,’ she said, looking at him in a kind of glad
surprise.
‘Aren’t we,’ said Christopher, kissing her hands again.
They wandered along the sands for a little after that, after their
simultaneous laughter had loosened them from their reserves and fears,
both feeling that an immense stride had been made in intimacy.
Catherine, as they wandered, expounded her view of the nature and
manifestations of true friendship, as other women have done on similar
occasions, and Christopher, even as other men on such occasions,
pretended that he thought just like that too.
He wasn’t going to frighten her away again. She had been flung back to
him in this unexpected frame of mind, this state of relief and gladness,
because it happened that Stephen was Stephen and Virginia was
Virginia,--but suppose she had chanced to run to appreciative friends,
friends delighted to have her, who petted her and made her happy, to the
enthusiastic Fanshawes, for instance, he would have had a poor hope of
anything but being avoided for the rest of his life. And he had
suffered, suffered. It had been the blackest week of misery. He wasn’t
going to risk any more of it. He would walk along the sands with her and
talk carefully with her of friendship.
And Catherine, used only to George, and without experience of the
endless variety of the approaches and disguises of love, was delighted
with Christopher, and felt every minute more reassured and safe. He
agreed, it appeared, completely with her that in a world where nobody
can get everything it is better to take something rather than have
nothing, and that friendship between a man and a woman, even a warm one,
is perfectly possible,--only reverting to his more violent way of speech
when she added, ‘Especially at our unequal ages,’ upon which he said, in
his earlier manner, ‘Oh, damn unequal ages.’
For a moment he had difficulty in not holding forth on this subject, and
her ridiculous obsession by it, but stopped himself. He wasn’t going to
spoil this. It was too happy, this wandering alone together on those
blessed solitary sands,--too, too happy, after the dark torments of the
week, to risk spoiling it. Let her say what she liked. Let her coo away
about being friends; in another moment she would probably assure him
that she would like to be his sister, his own dear sister, or his mother
to whom he could always turn in trouble, or some absurd female relation
of that sort. He wouldn’t stop her. He would only listen and laugh
inside himself. His Catherine. His love. As sure as she walked there, as
sure as there behind her, reaching farther and farther back, was a
double ribbon of her little wobbly footprints in the sand, she was his
love. And presently she too would know it, and all the sister and mother
and friend talk go the way such talk always went, and be remembered some
day only with wonder and smiles.
‘Catherine,’ he said, ‘just to walk with you makes me so happy that it’s
as clear as God’s daylight we’re the wonderfullest, most harmonious of
friends.’
The <i>relief</i> of being with Christopher! To be wanted again, to have some
one pleased to be with her, preferring to be with her than anywhere else
in the world,--what a contrast to her recent experiences at Chickover.
She no longer had the amused feeling of gratified vanity that had
warmed her in London before he began to behave badly; what she felt now
was much simpler and more sincere,--not trivial like that. They had both
been through their rages, and had come out into this fresh air, these
sunlit waters. They were friends.
‘I’m so glad I came away,’ she said, smiling up at him; and she very
nearly added, as she looked at him and saw him such a part of the
morning, and of the fresh sea and the clear light, so bright-haired and
young-limbed, ‘I do <i>love</i> you, Christopher----’ but was afraid he
would misunderstand. Which he certainly would have.
They arranged, before they turned back, that he should drive her up to
London that afternoon. Her luggage could be sent by train. It seemed
silly, he said, to stay till Monday when she didn’t want to, and
Virginia didn’t want her to, and nobody wanted her to, while in London
there were her friends, all wanting her----
‘One friend,’ she smiled.
‘Well, one friend is enough to change the world.’
‘Oh <i>yes</i>,’ she agreed, her eyes shining.
Still, it would be difficult, she said. Virginia would be astonished at
the motor-cycle----
‘She knows all about that by now,’ said Christopher. ‘You bet the old
lady has told her about it long ago. Rushed straight round on purpose.’
Well then, in that case, on the principle of being hung for a whole
sheep while one was about it, Catherine thought she might as well drive
up with him that day. Especially----
‘Now don’t say especially at our ages.’
‘I wasn’t going to. I was going to say, especially as it will make
everybody happy all round.’
‘Yes, my love--I mean, my friend. Even though they won’t admit it,’ said
Christopher.
He was to leave her, they decided, at the Chickover gates, and at lunch
she would explain him to Virginia, and then he would call for her at two
o’clock and take her away. Introduced, however, to Virginia first.
‘Must I be?’ he asked.
‘Of course,’ said Catherine.
With what different feelings did Christopher pack her up in the rug this
time. There was no fear now, no anxiety. She laughed, and was the
Catherine of the afternoon at Hampton Court,--only come so much nearer,
come so close up to him, come indeed, and of her own accord, almost
right into his heart.
‘My blessed little angel,’ he thought, propping her up in the seat when
she was wound round and couldn’t move her arms; and her eyes were so
bright, and her face so different from the face that he had seen in
church two hours before, that he said, ‘You looked ten years older this
morning than you did in London, and now you look twenty years younger
than you did then.’
‘What age does that make me?’ she asked, laughing up at him.
‘So you see,’ he said, ignoring this, ‘how wholesome, how necessary it
is to be with one’s friend.’