I
Between the end of March, when these things happened, and the end of
April, when Catherine married Christopher, all taxi-drivers,
bus-conductors and railway-porters called her Miss.
Such was the effect Christopher had on her. Except for him, she
reflected, they probably would have addressed her as Mother, for except
for him she would have been profoundly miserable at this time, in the
deep disgrace and pain of being cut off from Virginia, from whom her
letters came back unopened, re-addressed by Stephen; and there was
nothing like inward misery, she knew, for turning women into apparent
mothers, old mothers, just as there was nothing like inward happiness
for turning them into apparent misses, young misses. She had this inward
happiness, for she had Christopher to love her, to comfort her, to feed
her with sweet names; and she flowered in his warmth into a beauty she
had never possessed in the tepid days of George. Obviously what the
world needed was love. She couldn’t help thinking this when she caught
sight of her own changed face in the glass.
Her friends, seeing her, marvelled at the wonderful effect the visit to
Chickover had had. They had feared this visit for her, feared its
inevitable painful awkwardness; and here she was back again, looking so
much younger and happier that they could scarcely believe their eyes.
Headed by the Fanshawes, they decided that so attractive a little thing,
whose only child was now married and out of the way, should no longer be
allowed to waste in widowhood, and that a suitable husband with plenty
of money must be found for her as quickly as possible. A series of
dinners, beginning at the Fanshawes, was arranged, at each of which
Catherine was to meet, one after the other, some good fellow with plenty
of money. But these plans were all frustrated; first by the fact that
most good fellows with plenty of money had wives already, and if they
hadn’t they had something just as bad, such as extreme old age,
broken-down health, or confirmed ferocious bachelorhood; and secondly,
by the fact that Catherine wouldn’t come.
She wouldn’t come. She wouldn’t at last come to anything, not even to
the telephone, and was never to be found at home. In those days, in the
middle of April, her friends sought her in vain, for she was absorbed
altogether in Christopher and the arrangements for their marrying. The
arrangements were simple enough, seeing that Christopher would merely
leave his rooms and come and live in her flat. Mrs. Mitcham would sleep
out, and her room be his dressing-room. Between them, Catherine and
Christopher would have fourteen hundred a year and no rent to pay. It
was enough. He would, of course, earn more later on, and end, he assured
her, by making her quite rich; at which she smiled, for she cared
nothing for that. The arrangements were in themselves quite simple, but
she had to hide them from her friends. She was terribly afraid they
might find out, and add their surprise to her own surprise at what fate
seemed to be hurling her into.
For no one could be more surprised than Catherine. She had tried, she
had kept on trying, to keep only to an affectionate friendship with
Christopher, but wasn’t able at last to stand up against him. He was so
young and strong and determined. He never got tired. Her arguments were
as nothing compared to his. He brushed her counsels of prudence, of
wisdom aside. He merely was very angry when she gave their ages as a
reason, the reason, why they shouldn’t marry; and when she gave
Stephen’s command that they should as a reason why they simply couldn’t,
not for very pride they couldn’t, he looked at her with the calm pity of
one who watches a child hurting itself to spite its elders.
At night she lay awake and told herself she couldn’t possibly do this
thing, harm him so profoundly, handicap his whole future. Seeing that he
was so reckless, it behoved her to be wise and sane for them both. What
would she look like in ten years, and what would he look like coming
into a room with her? How plainly she saw at night that whatever she did
she ought not to marry Christopher, and how what she saw vanished like
shadows fleeing before the morning light when he came back to her next
day. He had all the fearless hopefulness, the fresh resolves of morning.
He swept her away with him into a region where nobody cared for
prudence, and wisdom was thrown to the winds. Not so had George loved
her; not so had any one, she began to believe, ever been loved before.
Christopher loved her with the passion of youth, of imagination, of
poetry, of all the fresh beginnings of wonder and worship that have
been since Love first lit his torch and made in the darkness a great
light.
What was age if one didn’t feel it? Why should she mind it if he didn’t?
No stranger seeing them would suppose there was a difference that
mattered. He made her young; and she would stay young for ever in his
love. <i>La chair de femme se nourrit de caresses</i> ... she had read that
somewhere, in the old days of George, and thought what stuff. Now she
began to believe it. Look at her in the glass--quite young, really quite
young. Love. Miraculous love, that could do all things. And suppose
after a while she did begin to grow old, he would have got used to her
by then, and perhaps not notice it.
So one day, tired of fighting, and in a sudden reckless mood, she said
she would marry him; and as soon as possible after that they were
married at the registrar’s in Princes Row, the witnesses being Mrs.
Mitcham, as usual hoping for the best and in new bonnet-strings, and
Lewes, who was so much upset that he could hardly sign the certificate,
from which stared out at him in plain words the disastrous facts--widow,
forty-seven, bachelor, twenty-five--and together went straight into what
Christopher knew was heaven but Catherine spoke of placidly as the Isle
of Wight.
Up to this point Catherine had loved Christopher, but not been in love
with him. It was a happy state. It had a kind of agreeable, warm
security. He was in love, and she only loved. He poured out his heart,
and she took it and was comforted. He made her forget Chickover, and
Stephen and Virginia, and he woo’d and woo’d till her face was all lit
up with the reassurance of his sweet flatteries. Her vanity was fed to
the point of beatitude. She smiled even in her sleep. But she remained
fundamentally untouched, and would have said, if obliged to think it
out, that her love for him didn’t differ much in degree from the love
she had had for Virginia. That was a great love, this was a great love.
They were different in kind, of course, but not in degree. One couldn’t
do more, she thought, than just love.
After she was married, however, she found that one could: one could not
only love but fall in love--two entirely distinct things, as she at once
and rather uneasily became aware. He had said, in the early days when
she used to be angry with him, that being in love was catching. She
hadn’t caught it from him during the whole of his wooing, but she did on
their honeymoon, and fell in love with a helpless completeness that
amazed and frightened her. So this was what it was like. This was that
thing they called passion, that had lurked in music and made her cry,
and had flashed out of poetry and made her quiver--at long intervals, at
long, long intervals in the sunny, empty years that had been her life.
Now it had got her; and was it pain or joy? Why, it was joy. But joy so
acute, so excessive, that the least touch would turn it into agony, a
heaven so perfect that the least flaw, the least shadow, would ruin it
into hell. How would she bear it, she thought, staring aghast at these
violent new emotions, if he were ever to love her less? There were no
half measures left now, she felt, no half tones, no neutral zones. It
was either all light, or would be, and how terrifyingly, all black.
They had taken a furnished cottage on the pleasant road that runs along
near the sea between St. Lawrence and Blackgang. The little house faced
the sea, which lay at the end of a meadow full of buttercups, for it
was the time of buttercups, on the other side of the road. A woman from
St. Lawrence came and looked after them by day, and at night they had
the house and the tiny garden and the quiet road and the whispering pine
trees and the murmuring sea to themselves. These were the days of her
poetry, and she said to herself--and she said it too to him, her lips
against his ear--that he had made the difference in her life between an
unlit room and the same room when the lamp is brought in; a beautiful
lamp, she whispered, with a silver stem, and its flame the colour of the
heart of a rose.
And Christopher’s answer was the answer of all young lovers not two days
married, and it did seem to them both that they were actually in heaven.
Such happiness had not appeared to either of them possible, such a
sudden revelation of what life could be, what life really was, when
filled to the brim with only love. She loved him passionately, she no
longer thought of anything or any one in the world but him. Now that it
had come upon her at last, late in her life, it seemed to catch her up
into an agonising bliss. Who was she, what had she done, to have this
extraordinary young love flung at her feet? And Christopher told himself
that he had always known it, he had always known that if he could only
wake her up, rouse her out of her sleep, she would be the most wonderful
of lovers.
They never laughed. They were dead serious. They talked mostly in
whispers, because passion always whispers; and for three days in that
happy, empty island, from whence the Easter tourists had departed and to
which the summer tourists had not yet come, down by the sea, up in the
woods, along through the buttercups, the sun shone on them by day and
the stars by night, and there was no smallest falling off in ecstasy.
Three days. The third day is usually the crucial one of a honeymoon, but
never having been on honeymoons before--the sweet word could not, she
felt, be applied to George’s wedding tour, and anyhow she had forgotten
that--they neither of them knew it, and Christopher was so young that
they passed through this day too at the highest pitch of happiness.
Then, on the fourth morning, Christopher breakfasted alone, for
Catherine was asleep when the bell rang and he had told the woman not to
disturb her, and after breakfast, going into the little garden with his
pipe and leaning on the gate staring across the bright and glorious
carpet of brisk buttercups at the sea, he suddenly felt overwhelmingly
disposed to meditation. Private meditation. By himself for a couple of
hours. Or, failing that, he felt he would like a game of golf. Exercise.
Out of doors. With a man.
He wondered where the golf links were; he wondered whether, if he went
to them, he might by some lucky chance find a man he knew. Catherine
didn’t play golf, and he didn’t want her to. He wanted for a bit to be
with a man, to stalk about with a man, and not say anything, except, if
it were necessary, swear, and know all the while that he was going back
to her, going back, amazingly, to his own wife. Or he would like to run
down to the sea and swim a long way, and then dry himself in the sun,
and then go off for a quick, striding walk up the cliffs behind the
house, out into the open where the wind blew fresh, and jolly little
larks sang. Catherine didn’t swim, and couldn’t walk like that, and he
didn’t want her to; he wanted to go off alone, so as to have the joy of
coming back, amazingly, to his own wife.
He went indoors and upstairs to look in at her and see if she were
awake, so that he might tell her he thought of going for a quick run
somewhere. But when he softly opened the door and crept into the room
and found her still asleep, he couldn’t resist kneeling down by the bed
and kissing her; whereupon she opened her eyes, and smiled so incredibly
sweetly at him that he slid his arm round her, and they began, his face
on the pillow beside hers, whispering again.
He went nowhere that day. In the afternoon they lay about together in
the field and read poetry. She asked him to. The desire for silent
meditation was stronger upon him by this time than ever, and he didn’t
want just then to read poetry.
She instantly noticed that he was reading it differently from the way he
had read it on the other days, reading it--but how could this be when he
was so fond of it?--almost reluctantly.
‘Is anything the matter, Chris?’ she asked, bending her face anxiously
over him.
He took it in his two hands. ‘I love you,’ he said.
How tired she looked. He was struck by it, out there in the afternoon
light, as he held her face in his hands.
He became attentive and anxious. ‘Aren’t you well, my darling?’ he
asked, still holding her face.
‘Yes. Quite. Why?’ she answered, wondering. Then added rather quickly,
drawing back, ‘Do I look tired?’
‘You’re so pale.’
‘I don’t <i>feel</i> pale,’ she said, turning her head away so that he could
only see her profile.
She tried to laugh, but she discovered she found it unpleasant to be
asked by Christopher if she didn’t feel well. It meant she must be
looking worn; and passionately she didn’t want to look worn,--not now,
not on her honeymoon, not married to Christopher, not ever. A most
undesirable thing to look, and to be avoided by every means in her
power.
‘I don’t feel pale at all,’ she said again, trying to laugh and keeping
her face turned away from him and the bright sunlight. ‘Inside, anyhow,
I feel all rosy.’
She jumped up. ‘Let’s go for a walk, Chris darling,’ she said, shaking
the buttercups he had stuck about her out of her dress. ‘We haven’t been
for a real good long walk since we got here.’
‘Are you sure you’re not too tired?’ he asked, getting up too.
‘Tired!’
And to show him what she could do, she started off at a great pace and
climbed over the five-barred gate into the road before he could reach
her to help.
But she was tired; and though the quick walk and climb made her hot and
hid her paleness, when she was in her room getting ready for the evening
meal and the heat had faded out of her cheeks, she was startled by her
face. Why, she looked ghastly. Her face seemed to be drooping with
fatigue. The corners of her mouth were pitiful with it, her eyes
appeared sunk in black shadows. And how white she was. She stared at
herself aghast; and a recollection of those pleasant bus-conductors and
taxi-men came into her mind, all smiling at her and calling her Miss as
lately as a week ago, and of her own image in the glass at that time
when, radiant with the cool happiness of not being in love, with the
peace of gratified vanity at having somebody extraordinarily in love
with her, while she herself loved him quite enough but not too much, she
might have been and was so easily taken for really young.
Really young ... ah, what a lovely thing to be ... married to
Christopher and really young....
The lamp in the cottage was like all lamps in cottages, and unpleasantly
glared. There was only one, and that one was now in the living-room, and
at meals stood on the table; and it had a white glass shade, and who
older than twenty-five could expect to stand light from a lamp with a
white glass shade after a long, hot, hilly walk? Even in her bedroom,
lit up only by two hesitating candle-flames, she looked worn out, so
what would she look like down there, faced by Christopher’s searching
eyes and that intolerable lamp?
It was as she had feared, and he did stare at her--at first with open
concern and questioning, and afterwards furtively, for she couldn’t help
showing she shrank from having her fatigue noticed. At the beginning of
their acquaintance she used to laugh when he told her she looked tired,
and say she wasn’t tired a bit, and it was merely age made her seem so;
she was perfectly frank and natural about it; she didn’t in the least
care. Now she couldn’t laugh, she found--she couldn’t bring herself to
say, with the gay indifference, the take-me-as-I-am-or-leave-me attitude
that was hers at the beginning, a word about age.
She hurried through the meal, and got up before he had finished, and
went and stood at the open window, looking at the stars.
‘What is it, my darling?’ asked Christopher anxiously, pushing away his
plate and coming after her.
‘It’s such a lovely night. Let’s put out that stupid lamp, and then we
can see the stars.’
‘But then we shan’t see each other.’
‘Do we want to?’
That was true; why see, when you can feel?
They put out the lamp, and sat at the open window smelling the sweet
night air, full of scents of damp grass and the sea, and he forgot his
fears, for in the dark she seemed quite well again, and he talked
sweetly to her, his arms round her, her head upon his breast, of their
happiness, and their love, and the perfect life they were going to have
together for the rest of their days; and she listened, pressing close to
him, painfully adoring him, shutting her mind against the remembrance of
that face in the glass, of that frightening face, of that face as it
would be every day soon when she was a little older, as it would be now
already each time she was overtired, or nervy, or the least thing
happened to worry her. Only she wouldn’t be overtired or nervy; and as
for things happening to worry her, what could do that in this haven of
safety she had got into with Christopher? And she would take the utmost
care of herself, now that she was so precious to somebody so dear, and
see to it that she kept well and strong; and nerves after all had never
in her life yet afflicted her,--the utmost sunny tranquillity of mind
and body had been hers always; why should she even think of such things?
The idea must have got into her head because of the funny feeling she
had had that day, the fourth of her happiness, of being on wires. She
had been jumpy. The smallest noise or sudden movement made her start.
And her body had a queer kind of tingling sensation in it, an
uncomfortable sensation of being exposed, raw at the surface; and her
skin felt sensitive, as though it were all rubbed the wrong way; and
besides, quite without any reason that she could discover, she had
wanted several times that afternoon to cry.
She shook herself. Silly thoughts. All imagination. Here was
Christopher, so real, dear, and close....
She put her arm round his neck and pulled herself up a little higher,
and laid her cheek against his. ‘I didn’t know one could be so happy,’
she said, clinging to him.
‘My darling love,’ he said, holding her tight.
They began to whisper.