She spent the afternoon walking up and down the drawing-room, even as
Stephen had spent the night walking up and down it.
She was trying to arrange her thoughts, so that she could see a little
more clearly through the tangle they were in, but as they were not so
much thoughts as feelings, and all of them agitated and all of them
contradictory, it was difficult.
What had happened to her was from every point of view most unpleasant.
Sometimes she cried, and sometimes she stopped dead in the middle of the
room, smitten by a horrid sensation of sickness when she thought of
Virginia. Stephen would be as good as his word, she knew, and cut her
off from Virginia, and how could he cut her off from Virginia without
explaining the reason for it, his reason for it? The alternative was to
marry Christopher. But what would Virginia think of <i>that</i>? And if she
did marry him--how incredible that she should find herself being forced
by Stephen, of all people, even to consider it--it would prove to
Stephen that he had been right, and that she had been guilty.
Guilty! She went scarlet with anger and humiliation at the word. She, at
her age; she, with her record of unvaryingly correct wifehood and
motherhood and widowhood, her single-minded concentration of devotion,
first on George and then on Virginia. Years and years of it there had
been, years and years of complete blamelessness. One would have
supposed, she said to herself, clenching her hands, that it ought to be
possible, after a lifetime of crystal-clear propriety, for a woman to be
in a motor break-down at night without instantly being suspected of
wickedness. Only clergymen, only thoroughly good clergymen, could have
such thoughts....
Oh, she would write at once to Virginia. She would tell her what had
happened. But how shameful to have to defend herself to her daughter
against such an accusation. And never again, of course, never, never
again could things be the same between them, because how could they be,
after all that Stephen had said?
Up and down the room walked Catherine. It was intolerable she told
herself; the whole situation was intolerable. She wouldn’t endure it.
She would go away to the ends of the earth,--away, away, and never come
back to a country inhabited by Stephen. She would turn her back on
everybody, shake their horrid dust from her feet, settle somewhere in
Africa or Australia, give herself up to forgetting....
And hardly had she declared this than she was declaring that she
wouldn’t. No, she wouldn’t be driven out of her own country by Stephen
and his base mind. She would stay and brave him out. She would tell
everybody what had happened,--not only Virginia, but Mrs. Colquhoun, and
all her friends both in London and at Chickover, and she would tell them
the sequel too, and what her clergyman son-in-law demanded of her as the
price she was to pay for being readmitted into the ranks of honest
women,--she would make him ridiculous, turn the laugh against him....
And hardly had she declared this than she was declaring that she
wouldn’t. No, she wouldn’t be bitter, she wouldn’t make Stephen
ridiculous, of course she would do nothing of the kind. How could she so
desperately hurt Virginia? But she would write to Virginia, and describe
the night’s misfortunes, and as tactfully as possible explain how
Stephen, in his anxiety, took an extreme view of what people might say
of her adventure, but that she was sure when he had had time to think it
over he would see that he was unnecessarily alarmed, and that nobody
would say anything.
She would restrict herself to this. She couldn’t, to Virginia, bring
herself to mention Stephen’s command that she should marry Christopher.
Marry Christopher! She threw back her head and laughed out loud,
standing alone among George’s frowning furniture, and went on laughing
till she found she wasn’t laughing at all, but crying; for there were
certainly tears rolling down her cheeks, and they were certainly not
tears of amusement. So then she wiped her face and began to walk up and
down again.
But struggle through the tangle of her mind as she might, Catherine
could see no real daylight. Always beneath her anger, her indignation at
Stephen’s odious instant jumping to the worst conclusions--‘And he a
priest of God,’ she said to herself, rolling her damp handkerchief into
a ball--was that memory of kisses on her closed eyelids. What things one
did in the dark! How differently one behaved. The memory of these kisses
pulverised her morale, made the bones of her pride go to water within
her. If only, only she had insisted on walking on. But it had seemed so
natural to sit down, especially when there was nowhere to walk to. And
once she had sat down, the rest had followed in the simplest sequence.
At intervals of half an hour the telephone bell rang, and Mrs. Mitcham
came in and said Mr. Monckton was at the telephone.
‘Tell him I’m asleep,’ said Catherine each time, turning her face away
so that Mrs. Mitcham should not see she had been crying.
At five o’clock Mrs. Mitcham came to say that Mr. Monckton was asking
when he might come round.
‘Tell him I’m still asleep,’ said Catherine, looking out of the window.
Christopher. What was she going to do about him? She could say she was
asleep that afternoon, but she couldn’t be asleep for ever; sooner or
later she would have to see him. That morning, after the dreadful
encounter with Stephen on the door-mat, she had sent Christopher away at
once. Overwhelmed by the shocking bad fortune of running straight into
Stephen, by the shocking bad fortune of having Christopher with her, who
had carried up her things for her when it wasn’t in the least necessary,
only one doesn’t think, one says yes without thinking,--naturally one
does, for one can’t suspect life of going to hit one at every twist and
turn--she had told him to go away, had almost pushed him away, as if,
now that the mischief was done, his going or staying mattered any more.
But what was she going to do about him? Was she strong enough to defy
Stephen and go on seeing Christopher just as before, without marrying
him? And Virginia? Whatever she did in regard to Stephen included
Virginia; if she defied one she defied and cut herself off from the
other. How could she let go of Virginia, her only flesh and blood, her
one baby, so tenderly loved and cared for? How could she bear to know
that Virginia would believe she had done something abominable? It was a
nightmare ... she didn’t know how to shake herself free ... all because
of Stephen....
Seeing nothing, because she was blind with tears, she stood at the
window that looked out into the grey and gloomy street. To think that
this had happened just as she had got her relationship with Christopher
on to a clear and comfortable footing, freed him from all the nonsense
in his mind! Oh, well--last night--it was true there was last night--but
that didn’t count, that was an accident, that was because it was so cold
and dark, and anyhow she wasn’t awake,--no, that didn’t count. She <i>had</i>
freed his mind, she <i>had</i> cleared him up, and here comes Stephen, and
with his awful points of view, his terrible saintly suspiciousness,
smashes the whole of her friendship to bits. And however much she might
have wished to marry Christopher--she never, never would have wished to,
but <i>supposing</i> she had--she couldn’t do it now, because it would be an
admission that she must.
She leant her forehead against the cold window-pane. The houses opposite
stared across from out of their blank, curtained faces. It was raining,
and the street looked a grimy, sooty place, chill and lonely on that wet
Sunday afternoon, indifferent and hard. What did one do when one was in
trouble and had no one to go to? What did one <i>do</i>?
‘Mr. Monckton, m’m,’ said Mrs. Mitcham, opening the door.
‘However often he telephones,’ said Catherine in a smothered voice, her
face carefully turned to the street, ‘tell him I’m still a--asleep.’
The door shut, and there was silence in the room behind her.
Then some one came across it,--she supposed Mrs. Mitcham, going to make
up the fire, and she resented the impossibility, when one was unhappy,
of getting away from the perpetual interruptions of routine. Fires to be
made up, meals to sit down to and pretend to eat, clothes to be put on
and taken off,--how could one be thoroughly unhappy, get to grips with
one’s wretchedness, have it out, if one were always being interrupted?
Then she suddenly knew it wasn’t Mrs. Mitcham, it was Christopher.
She turned round quickly to send him away, but found him so close behind
her that by merely turning she tumbled up against him.
Instantly his arms were round her, and instantly she had the feeling she
had had the night before, when going to sleep, of comfort, and warmth
and safety.
‘You mustn’t----’ she tried to protest; but he held her tight, and even
while she said he mustn’t she knew he must, and she must.
‘Oh, Chris,’ she whispered, her cheek pressed against his coat, ‘I’m so
<i>ashamed</i>--so <i>ashamed</i>----’
‘What of?’ asked Christopher, holding her so tight that even if she had
wanted to she couldn’t have got away. But she didn’t want to.
‘Stephen has been here, saying the most awful things----’
‘Has he, by Jove,’ said Christopher, his head on hers, one hand softly
stroking her face. ‘He’s a very good chap, though,’ he added.
‘What? Stephen? Why, you know he isn’t.’
‘But he is. He came to see me too, this afternoon.’
‘<i>Oh.</i>’
‘And I think he’s a thorough sensible chap.’
‘Why, what did he--what did he----?’
‘Narrow, of course, and an infernal ass in places, as I told him several
times in the clearest language, besides being a disgusting swine with a
regrettably foul mind----’
‘Oh, then did he--did he----?’
‘But as good and sensible really, within his limits, as any one I’d wish
to speak to.’
‘Oh, Chris--then he----?’
‘Yes. And we’re going to.’