Her nephew. So that was what Christopher seemed to be to this impartial
stranger. It gave Catherine more than a shock, it made her heart feel as
if it stood still. And his surprise, his humiliating surprise, when she
said Christopher was her husband, and her own discomfort when she told
him....
Was it so much marked, then, the difference between them? It hadn’t been
in London. Why, in London before they married they had often stood arm
in arm in front of a glass and laughed to see how no one would guess,
really no one could possibly guess, that they were not very nearly of an
age. Besides what about all those bus-conductors and people calling her
Miss? One of them had even called her Missie--‘Take care, now, Missie,’
he had said, catching her by the arm, ‘don’t you go jumping off before
we’re stopped and breaking your neck and getting us into trouble with
your young man’--but he, she was afraid, had been drinking. It must be
because she was so tired now always that she looked older. To-day she
was tired, yesterday she had been tired--oh, but so tired, so <i>tired</i>.
She stared up at Mr. Jerrold, while the flush faded out of her face, and
thought how dreadful it was going to be if every time she was tired
people took her for Christopher’s aunt. What a humiliation. And
inevitably sooner or later he would notice it himself, and hear it too
from strangers, just as she was hearing it from this stranger.
‘Let us sit down,’ said Mr. Jerrold sensibly, ‘and wait for them to come
back.’
And a day or two afterwards, when Christopher, impelled by his desire
for movement, by a terrific longing to do something, anything, that
wasn’t lying in grass reading poetry to Catherine--if he didn’t read
poetry to her she was surprised and asked him why, because at the
beginning he had wanted to do nothing else--hired a two-seater and drove
her round the island, stopping for the night at a little place on the
west side where there was a small hotel they liked the look of, on their
going in and asking if they could be put up for the night the young lady
in the office, glancing at them, said she was very sorry but she had
only one room vacant.
‘But we only want one,’ said Christopher, surprised at this answer. ‘We
want a double room, that’s all.’
‘Oh, I’m sorry----’ said the young lady, turning red and bending over
her ledger to hide her confusion. ‘Yes----’ she said, running her
finger down the page, ‘I can give you No. 7.’
‘Do you think she thought we weren’t married?’ said Christopher, amused,
when they were in No. 7 undoing their suit-cases. ‘Or do you think she
thought we were so grand that we couldn’t do without a sitting-room?’
Catherine, very busy it seemed with her suit-case, said nothing. She
couldn’t have. She felt sick, as if some one had hit her head. Again she
had been taken for Christopher’s aunt. Or even for his--no, her mind
swerved aside from that word; it simply refused to look at it.
They saw no more of the Jerrolds, though Christopher had talked of long
and violent scrambles with the eagerly acquiescent Billy while they
sprinted on ahead that morning before he realised that Catherine had
been left behind out of sight. When he did discover this he had turned
back at once. ‘Come on,’ he had said to the surprised Billy, seizing her
wrist, ‘we must run.’
And he had run; and she had run, thinking it great fun but wondering why
they should be running; and after that, when they all joined up again,
her father had taken her back to the hotel and the Moncktons had gone
for their picnic by themselves, and she had never set eyes on them again
nor heard anything more of the promised scrambles.
But one thing she had heard, and with astonishment, from her father, and
that was that Mr. Monckton was Mrs. Monckton’s husband.
‘No!’ cried Billy, her eyes very round; adding, after a silence, ‘Good
Lord.’
‘Quite,’ said her father.
A few days more and the honeymoon was at an end. Christopher had not
attempted again to leave Catherine, for she didn’t seem well, though she
assured him she was,--assured him eagerly, almost painfully eagerly, and
that it was only the spring. He wasn’t quite able to believe this, and
stayed with her and petted her. She loved to lie quite quiet in his
arms, out of doors or anywhere, while he read to her or they both
snoozed. He suppressed his fidgetings, because he knew if he said he
wanted to walk she would want to walk with him, and then she would be
tired out and he after all not exercised. It struck him once as odd how
little they talked. They used to talk and talk before they were married.
Now they hardly said anything, except when they began to whisper, and
then it wasn’t talk, but emotion clothing itself scantily in words.
Still, it had been a heavenly, heavenly time; something to remember
joyfully all one’s days.
‘When we’re old,’ he said, the last evening, ‘how we shall think of
this.’
Just as if, she thought, pressing close to him so as to hide from the
thought, when he had got to the stage of being old she wouldn’t, far
ahead of him, be long past thinking at all.
He had to be back at his office the end of the second week, and the last
night in their abode of bliss they hardly slept at all, so loth were
they to lose any minutes of what was left of their honeymoon in
unconsciousness; and the effect of this was that in the morning, while
Christopher was as blithe as a lark and breakfasted cheerfully and
packed up with zeal, Catherine could hardly move for fatigue, and was
really shocked by her leaden face when she saw it in the glass.
Luckily he noticed nothing that time; he was too busy packing up, too
much pleased in the fresh morning to be doing something different, to be
starting on a journey. Besides, wasn’t he going to work like a navvy
now? Hadn’t he got something to work for,--responsibilities, the
sweetest, most wonderful in the world? He itched to be at it, to do
well, make her proud of him, earn money for her as that old George had
earned money for her.
With gusto he swept his scattered things into his suit-case, whistling
the love music out of <i>The Immortal Hour</i> as he packed, with gusto he
settled the bills and tipped the woman, with gusto he walked, his arm
through Catherine’s, down the path to the gate for the last time, and
waved to the buttercup-field in which he would not again have to lie. He
was in high spirits. It was jolly getting back to work, beginning it
again in these new delicious conditions, with Catherine to speed him in
the morning and welcome him back at night. Now he would have variety;
now he would have work and love, absence and presence, in their right
proportion.
He was very happy. It seemed incredible to him, as he fondly looked down
at her when they were in the bright warm sunshine on the ferry, that he
had actually attained his heart’s desire and got Catherine. Life was
splendid,--packed with possibilities, a thing of the utmost
magnificence. The waters of the Solent danced and sparkled; white wings
flashed out of the deep blue of the sky; the sun lay hot across the back
of his neck; the wind was fresh and salt in his face; the world looked
as it must have looked on the morning of its first day. Old Lewes--he
would go and dig out old Lewes to-morrow, and make him come and lunch in
one of those jolly little restaurants where the food was good and ladies
didn’t go, and yarn his head off. And on Saturday he would take
Catherine down and introduce her to his uncle, who would certainly adore
her, and she would wander about the garden and enjoy her darling little
self while he gave the old boy the round of golf he knew he was
thirsting for. So was he thirsting for it. His honeymoon had been
wonderful, but a fortnight is enough. It wouldn’t of course be enough,
and one would never then want it to end, if one were going to be torn
from one’s beloved when it was over. But here they were, he and she,
entering into the joys, the varied joys of married life, with him, the
male, girding up his loins in the morning and going forth to labour
until the evening, as men from time immemorial had girded themselves and
gone forth, and coming back at night to his nest and his mate. And this
after all was better in the long run than a honeymoon, just as real good
bread and butter was better than everlasting cake.
‘I’m so happy,’ he said, slipping his arm round her and giving her a
quick hug when no one was looking. He couldn’t see her face; she was
sitting too close to him, besides having put on a gauze motor-veil.
‘Darling Chris,’ she murmured, smiling through her veil.
But she would have liked it better if he hadn’t been quite so
exuberantly happy on that particular morning. After all, it was the
finish of their honeymoon, and they would never have one again. Yet
perhaps it was as well it was finished. Once at home and he at work, she
would be able to sleep at least all day....
In London Mrs. Mitcham, anxious to do the right thing, had filled
George’s different bits of china with white flowers, and the
drawing-room with its heavy black furniture looked more like a carefully
kept-up memorial than ever. She herself was very clean and spruce in her
best apron, and her face was wreathed in the proper welcoming smiles,
though she was in fact excessively nervous and embarrassed. She had
always liked Christopher, with the indulgent liking of the elderly
female servant for the irrepressible young gentleman, and she was
thoroughly aware that marriage was marriage, yet she couldn’t help
turning a little red when he marched into her mistress’s bedroom as if
it were his. So it was his; but for years and years it hadn’t been his,
and for years and years before that it not only hadn’t been his but had
been poor Mr. Cumfrit’s. It was her vivid recollection of poor Mr.
Cumfrit--the times she had taken him and Mrs. Cumfrit their morning tea
into that very room, and they always so pleasant and content together in
their double bed--that gave her this feeling of shock when she saw
Christopher walking in.
Mrs. Mitcham, who was so well trained that her very thoughts were
respectful, wouldn’t have dreamed of comparing Christopher to a cuckoo,
but she had heard of the bird’s habits in regard to nests not originally
its own, and deep down in the vast dark regions of her subconsciousness,
where no training had ever set its foot and simple candour prevailed,
was the recognition of the fact that her mistress was the natural prey
of cuckoos,--first Stephen, turning her out of her original nest, now
Christopher, taking possession of this one.
She could only hope that all would be well. What wasn’t well, plain
enough for any one to see, was her mistress. Mrs. Mitcham couldn’t have
believed such a change possible in that short time. ‘It’s them
honeymoons,’ she said to herself, shaking her head over her saucepans.
They did no good to a woman, she thought, not after a certain age. You
had to be very strong to put up with them at any time. No rest. No
regular hours. Never knew where you were. <i>He</i> looked all right, the
young gentleman did, and it wasn’t for not being happy that her mistress
didn’t, for already, in the quarter of an hour since they had arrived,
Mrs. Mitcham had seen more love about in the flat than she could
remember during the whole of poor Mr. Cumfrit’s time in it. She couldn’t
help wondering what that poor gentleman would say if he could see what
was happening in his flat. He wouldn’t much like it, she was afraid;
but perhaps hardly anybody who was dead would much like what they would
see, supposing they were able to come back and look. Even Mitcham
wouldn’t. What Mitcham wouldn’t like seeing, if there was nothing else
for him to grumble about, would be how well she had got on without him.
She carried the asparagus into the dining-room. Once again, as she
opened the door, she felt uncomfortable. How should she have thought of
knocking first? She had never had to knock at any except bedroom doors
since she had been in service. Whenever she happened to go into a room
everything would be just as nice and what you’d expect as possible: Mr.
Cumfrit at the head of the table, taking a sip of claret, Mrs. Cumfrit
on his right hand, quietly eating her toast. ‘I’ve done a good stroke of
business to-day,’ Mr. Cumfrit would be saying. ‘I’m so glad, George
dear,’ Mrs. Cumfrit would be answering. Things like that would be going
on in the room, things you’d expect. Or, in the drawing-room, Mr.
Cumfrit would be one side of the fire, Mrs. Cumfrit the other, reading
out bits of the evening paper to each other. ‘Seems to me this wretched
Government doesn’t know what it wants,’ Mr. Cumfrit would be saying. ‘It
does seem so, doesn’t it, George dear,’ Mrs. Cumfrit would be answering,
quiet and ladylike.
But this....
Impossible for Mrs. Mitcham not to start and draw back when she opened
the door. She all but scattered the lovely asparagus over the carpet.
She wasn’t used--and her mistress, too--she couldn’t have believed----
‘Come in, come in, Mrs. Mitcham,’ the young gentleman called out gaily,
picking up his napkin which had fallen on to the floor. ‘We’re married,
you know. It’s all right. You signed the certificate yourself.’
Mrs. Mitcham smiled nervously. The sauce-boat rattled in its dish as she
handed it to her mistress. She wasn’t used to this sort of thing.