IV_Love_笔趣阁

That evening, sentimentally, they went to The Immortal Hour. In this

very place, only two months back, they had been sitting apart hardly

aware of each other, hardly more than looking at each other out of the

corners of their eyes.

‘Do you remember the night I first moved up next to you?’ Christopher

whispered.

‘Don’t I,’ she murmured.

‘Oh, Catherine--isn’t it wonderful to think we’re married!’ he

whispered.

‘Sh-sh-,’ hissed the audience, still sparse and still ferocious.

She was in bliss again. He loved her so. He had been so utterly charming

in Hertford Street, boyishly delighted with everything, filling the dull

little flat with youth, and all that youth trails with it of clouds of

glory--laughter, happiness, radiant confidence. Amazing to have this

there after George, after the quiet years since George.

By the evening she was tired, horribly tired, and knew she looked like a

ghost; but she didn’t mind as long as it was dark and he couldn’t see

her silly white face and smudged, haggard eyes. There was only one

interval, and her hat would hide her then. The Immortal Hour was such

a nice dark opera: pitch dark for ages in the first act,--so restful, so

soothing.

She went sound asleep, her head against his arm. He didn’t know she was

asleep, and was thinking all the time of how they were both thinking and

feeling the same things exactly, he and she who owed each other to the

for-ever-to-be-adored Immortal Hour.

‘Darling, darling,’ he murmured, stooping and trying to kiss her at the

darkest moment. This bliss of unity with the perfect love, this end of

loneliness, this enveloping joy....

She slept profoundly.

However, she woke when the curtain went down before the second part of

the act, and those of the audience who were new to it clapped in spite

of the music going on, and those who weren’t new indignantly hissed at

them, and sat up and pulled her hat straight. It was the same funny

little extinguishing hat she used to wear at the beginning; he had

specially asked her to put it on.

‘Yes, we must be proper now,’ said Christopher, smiling at her.

‘Sh-sh-,’ hissed the outraged audience.

How familiar it all was; how happy they were. She was glad he didn’t

know she had been asleep. It was awful to have gone to sleep on such an

occasion, but then she was so appallingly tired. Never in her life had

she been tired like this. Ah, here was the love scene beginning ... she

wouldn’t go to sleep now....

Her hand slid into his; his shut tight over it; they sat close, close,

thrilled by memories, by all that the music meant to them; and in the

most beautiful part Catherine felt her thrills grow fainter and fade

away and go out, and again her head drooped against his shoulder and

again she went sound asleep.

‘Oh, I love you, love you,’ whispered Christopher, putting his arm round

her, sure her drooping head was the gesture of abandonment to

irresistible emotion.

‘Sh-sh-,’ hissed the audience.

Afterwards he wanted to take her somewhere to supper.

‘Supper?’ echoed Catherine faintly, who was dying with fatigue.

‘Yes. We must celebrate--drink the health of our home-coming,’ said

Christopher, drawing her hand through his arm and proudly walking her

off to a taxi. His wife. Marvellous. No more slipping away in the crowd

and escaping him now, thank you. ‘Let’s go somewhere where we can dance.

I shall blow up if I don’t let off steam somehow.’

‘Dance?’ echoed Catherine again, still more faintly, as she was swept up

into the taxi.

‘Do you realise we’ve never danced together once yet?’

‘But we can’t go anywhere like that in these clothes.’

That was true. He hadn’t thought of that. Well then, they would dress

properly the next night and go and dance and dance.

Catherine sat back in the seat. Dance? She hadn’t danced for years, not

since before her marriage with George--never since.

She told Christopher this, and he only laughed and said it was high time

she did dance; he adored dancing; he longed to dance with her; they

would often go.

‘Oh, Christopher,’ said Catherine, sliding close up to him, ‘the best

thing of all will be being alone together at home, you and I, in your

precious evenings. Won’t we go there now? Do we really want supper?’

‘Tired, darling?’ he asked, instantly anxious, stooping to look under

her hat.

‘Oh no--not a bit. Not in the least. Really not,’ said Catherine

quickly. ‘But--our first evening--it’s so lovely at home----’

He hung out of the window and redirected the driver. ‘Yes. Of course,’

he said, taking her in his arms. ‘That’s far and away the best of

all----’

And they began to whisper.

Next day he went back to work. When he left at ten o’clock Catherine was

still in bed.

‘Do you mind my not being at breakfast?’ she had asked him when Mrs.

Mitcham very gingerly beat, or, more accurately, delicately patted the

gong.

Mrs. Mitcham had had some moments of painful indecision before doing

anything with the gong. It was altogether a most awkward morning for

her. She had never yet been placed in such a position. Husband and wife,

of course, and all that--she knew all that; but still it did feel

awkward, and she had a queer reluctance to rousing them--almost as if

they were dangerous, as well as embarrassing, to have loose about the

flat. Yet it was breakfast time. Orders were for nine sharp. She did

finally get herself to the gong and timidly tapped it, divided between

duty and her odd reluctance to see her mistress and the young gentleman

come out of that room, to have to face them....

‘Stay there, my darling love,’ said Christopher, smoothing the pillows

and tucking Catherine up as tenderly as if she were a baby. ‘I’ll bring

you your breakfast.’

‘I--never do get up to breakfast,’ she said, after a moment’s

hesitation, smiling at him as he bent over her--she, who had not once

during the whole of George’s time missed being down on the stroke of

half-past eight to pour out his coffee for him and kiss him good-bye on

the door-mat. ‘Good-bye, little woman,’ George used to say, waving to

her before the lift engulfed him. In those days good husbands of good

wives frequently called them little women.

Here now was her chance. She would establish a custom that might save

her. And if she never had got up to breakfast it wouldn’t worry

Christopher that she never did, and he wouldn’t, frowning with concerned

perplexity, ask her searching questions as to being not well. So, by

sleeping on into the mornings after he had gone to work, she might catch

up with rest and dodge those horrid furrows exhaustion was dragging down

her face.

So the habit was started, and Mrs. Mitcham learnt not to expect to see

her till lunch-time. Sometimes she even slept later, and once or twice

stayed in bed all day, not getting up till just in time to dress for

dinner. This, however, only happened during the first two or three

weeks. As time went on Mrs. Mitcham began to be able to count on her

mistress’s having her bath at twelve o’clock and being ready by one.

Mrs. Mitcham was all for her resting and taking care of herself, for she

was much attached to Catherine, but she couldn’t help feeling--she

didn’t permit herself to think it, but she couldn’t help feeling--that

there was something unbecoming in this turning of day into night. There

was plenty of night, Mrs. Mitcham thought, for those who chose to take

it, but of course if----

Mrs. Mitcham, folding up her mistress’s garments, shook her head. And

the garments too--she shook her head at them. Such things had not

hitherto been part of Mrs. Cumfrit’s outfit. Good things she had had, as

good of their kind as one would wish to see,--lawn, silk, fine

embroideries,--but never what Mrs. Mitcham called flimsies. These were

flimsy, and not only flimsy but transparent. Every time Mrs. Mitcham saw

them she was shocked afresh. She couldn’t get used to them. Mrs.

Cumfrit--she corrected herself, and said Mrs. Monckton--had gone out and

bought them the first afternoon of her return from the Isle of Wight;

and she so careful about coals, and turning the electric light out.

There were six nightgowns that you could pull through a wedding-ring,

they went so into nothing. Chiffon nightgowns. Different colours. Pink,

lemon-colour, and so on; and all of them you could see through as plain

as daylight. It was a mercy, thought Mrs. Mitcham, that it was dark at

night. She, who prided herself on Catherine and had always thought her

the ideal of what a lady should be, was much perturbed by these

nightgowns. And the bathroom too--such a litter there now of scented

dusting powder, and scented crystals, and flagons of coloured liquid

that smelt good but improper, thought Mrs. Mitcham, furtively sniffing;

what would poor Mr. Cumfrit say to his bathroom now, he who had never

had a thing in it but a big sponge and a piece of Pears’ soap?

It was after the visit of the Fanshawes that Mrs. Mitcham first found a

lip-stick on Catherine’s dressing-table. She was immensely upset. No

lady she had had to do with had ever had such a thing on her

dressing-table. Powder was different, because one needed powder

sometimes for other things besides one’s face, and also one powdered

babies, and they, poor lambs, couldn’t be suspected of wanting to

appear different from what God had made them. But a lip-stick! Red

stuff. What actresses put on, and those who were no better than they

should be. Her mistress and a lip-stick--what would Miss Virginia say?

The Fanshawes, who were the immediate cause of the buying of the

lip-stick, came to tea the second Sunday after the end of the

honeymoon,--Ned, his mother and sister. They had been extraordinarily

taken aback by Catherine’s appearance. The flat rang with their

exclamations and laments. Catherine, who had been looking sixteen when

they last saw her, Catherine the bright-eyed, the quick of movement,

Catherine with her lovely skin and unruffled brow--they couldn’t get

over it.

Christopher had gone for a walk in the Park after lunch, straining at

his leash, angry at being kept in London this beautiful afternoon

because the Fanshawes insisted on coming and thrusting their inquisitive

noses where they weren’t wanted, and he hadn’t got back when they

arrived, so that Catherine had them to herself at first.

‘Damn those women,’ he had remarked when, after persistent telephoning

and letters and impassioned inquiries as to what had happened to her and

when they might come and see her, Catherine had felt she had better face

it and wrote and told them she was married and asked them to tea that

Sunday to meet her husband. And when he heard that it wasn’t only women

but Ned too, he damned him particularly, on the ground that he had a

silly nose and wore a fur rug up to his chin; and, expressing extreme

disgust at being kept in on his and Catherine’s only real afternoon by

a blighter like that, he went off for a quick turn in the Park,

promising faithfully to be back in time.

He wasn’t; and the Fanshawes got there first, and the flat was echoing

with exclamations when he opened the door.

Catherine was sitting on the sofa, wedged between the two female

Fanshawes, whose arms encircled her and whose free hands stroked her,

and that worm Ned was looking on from his, Christopher’s, special chair.

‘I’ve had influenza--that’s why,’ Catherine was lying as he came in.

‘But fancy not telling us you were married! Fancy not telling us a

word!’

‘Of course it’s what we’ve been dying to have happen for ages--isn’t it,

Ned?’

‘You sweet little thing, we’re so delighted--aren’t we, Ned?’

‘Do tell us all about it. Isn’t he off his head with happiness? How

pleased Virginia must be----’

‘So nice for her to have a father again----’

‘Are they devoted to each other?’

‘Have you been down to Chickover with him yet?’

‘We’re simply aching to see him----’

And there in the doorway he stood.

‘Here is Christopher,’ said Catherine, flushing and half getting up.

They all turned their heads. For a moment nobody spoke. He advanced on

them with outstretched hand, doing his best to smile broadly, to be the

welcoming host.

That young man. That boy. The boy they had found with Catherine one

day, who had rushed out the minute they came in, and Catherine had

laughed when they asked who on earth he was, and said all she knew

about him was that he was certainly mad. That fellow. The youth who

had glared through the window of the car and almost shook his fist....

The Fanshawes couldn’t speak. They couldn’t move either. They were

stunned.

At Chickover there had been the most painful consultations between

Stephen and Mrs. Colquhoun as to the best thing to do under the

deplorable circumstances. Should they or should they not tell Virginia?

Could they, indeed, help telling her? Not all, of course; she must never

be told all. The night spent somewhere between Chickover and

London--they both felt that the entire stretch of country between those

two points was from henceforth polluted--the night that made the

scandalous marriage a necessity, must be kept from Virginia for ever.

But it became clear after a week that she must be told something, if

only to account for her not hearing from her mother.

Stephen couldn’t bring himself to let her have the letters. They came at

first, as he had expected, one after the other and all very thick. He

wondered, turning them over in his hand, whether it wasn’t his duty to

open them, but he resisted the strong leaning towards his duty that

lifelong practice in doing it had induced in him, and took the more

dignified course of sending them back unopened. Much more punitive too,

he felt,--leaving the wretched woman completely in the dark as to what

was happening at Chickover and what Virginia was feeling.

Then, when the letters at last left off coming, he watched for

telegrams; he rather expected telegrams.

None came.

Then he was on the look-out for an unannounced arrival; he quite thought

there would be one.

Nothing happened. Just silence.

At the end of the week Virginia said, ‘I can’t think why mother doesn’t

write’--and began to look worried, and write letters herself.

Stephen took them out of the box in the hall and burnt them. ‘Painful,

painful necessities,’ he said to Mrs. Colquhoun; for this letter

business went against the grain--the gentleman grain, he told his

mother, who hardly left him, comforting and advising him as best she

could.

At the end of another week Virginia sent a telegram, or rather was going

to send it but was stopped by Stephen. Clearly she must be told

something. She had said, while writing it: ‘If I don’t get an answer to

this I shall go up to London myself and see if anything is wrong.’

‘Poor child, poor child,’ murmured Mrs. Colquhoun, the moment for

enlightenment having manifestly come. ‘Would you like me to be with

you?’ she whispered in Stephen’s ear.

‘Better not, I think,’ he whispered back.

Alone with Virginia he took her on his knee. She was holding the

telegram she had just written, and was in a hurry to go and send it off.

‘Yes, Stephen--what is it?’ she asked, fretted at being held back, and

worried by this strange silence of her mother’s to the point of being

unlike herself.

‘I am but a clumsy creature,’ he began, overwhelmed by the thought of

the blow about to be delivered--and delivered by his hand, too, his own

loving hand.

He laid his head on her breast, his arms round her, as she sat on his

knee.

This beginning made Virginia still more uneasy; Stephen had never called

himself a clumsy creature before. ‘What is it, darling?’ she asked, very

anxious.

‘What is it not,’ groaned Stephen, holding her tight. To think it was

he, he who so deeply loved her....

‘Oh, Stephen’--Virginia was thoroughly frightened--‘mother?’

‘Yes. Yes. Yours. And Virginia, my loved wife,’ he said, raising his

head and looking at her, ‘believe me I had rather, to spare you, it were

mine.’

Virginia sat like a stone. Her face was stiff and set. The worst had

happened, then. Her little mother, her own sweet little mother, to whom

she had been unkind, unloving, and who had never once failed in kindness

and love to her, was dead.

‘She is dead,’ said Virginia, in a voice so toneless that it sounded

indifferent.

‘How much better,’ thought Stephen, ‘for everybody as well as herself if

she were.’

Aloud he said, his face buried in Virginia’s bosom. ‘No. She is not

dead. Quite the contrary. She is remarrying.’

And as Virginia said nothing, for her breath was taken away by these

blows and counter-blows, he went on: ‘Darling, I would have spared you

if I could. I have tried to spare you. I have tried all these days to

find some way of keeping it from you. Indeed, indeed I have tried----’

‘But, Stephen--why? Why shouldn’t mother marry again?’ asked Virginia,

with the irritability natural to people who have been frightened without

cause, but so unusual in her that Stephen could only account for it by

her physical condition. ‘I think it very strange of her not to tell me,

but why shouldn’t she remarry? Now there’ll be somebody to take care of

her. I’m glad.’

‘Darling----’

He pressed his face still closer to her bosom. He wished he could hide

it there for ever.

‘But I do think,’ said Virginia, reaction against her mother setting in

now she knew she wasn’t dead, as it had set in the day she saw her

trotting safe and sound up the avenue when she had been torn by fears of

an accident, ‘I do think she might have told me. I do think that.’

Her voice had tears in it. She strangled them, and held herself up very

straight, offering no real hospitality to Stephen’s head. She was deeply

wounded.

‘Ah, but there are some things one doesn’t tell,’ said Stephen.

He was miserable. He would have given at least half Chickover to be able

to spare her.

‘Remarrying isn’t one of them,’ she said; and for the first time he

caught a glimpse of another Virginia, a Virginia who perhaps, ten years

ahead, might argue.

He raised his head from her bosom and looked at her again.

‘I know what I am talking about, my child,’ he said. ‘This remarrying

is. She is marrying the young man with whom she motored up to London.

You saw him yourself. Perhaps you will now agree that there are some

things one does not willingly tell one’s daughter.’

Virginia stared at him a moment, her eyes very wide open. Then, without

speaking a word, she got up off his knee and walked over to a window and

stood at it with her back to him.

How strange of her, he thought. What a strange way of meeting

trouble--to go away from him like that, to turn from the love that

longed to help her.

He didn’t know what to do or say next. He sat watching her in the utmost

perplexity. His Virginia, getting up off his knee, withdrawing herself

from his loving arms----

‘Yes,’ she said after a long silence. ‘I can imagine there may be such

things. But I don’t think’--she turned and faced him--‘this is one of

them.’

He got on to his feet and went towards her, his arms outstretched.

‘My darling, my wounded darling,’ he cried, all understanding and

pitifulness, ‘you are generous and young----’

‘So is Mr. Monckton,’ was her unexpected answer.

Really it was like a blow in the face. It stopped him short. It must

be her condition. But all that day the attitude continued, the strange,

almost defiant attitude, and Stephen could only go into his study and

pray that her heart might be softened, and her eyes opened to see things

as they truly were.

Such a grave misfortune--she did not of course know how grave, how

terrible it was--the first in their married life, and to take it this

way, hardening her heart against the sympathy and understanding he and

his mother offered her in such boundless measure, and persisting, with

an obstinacy he wouldn’t have dreamed her capable of, in upholding what

her mother had done! True she said very little, but that little was all

obstinate. She was quite unlike her usual self to his mother, too,

whose one thought was to comfort, and would not admit that there was

anything to be comforted about. And when that night he got into bed, and

drew her to his heart in the exquisite contact of the body that had

always till then soothed every trouble of the spirit, and she came

apparently willingly, and clung to him, and was his own dear wife as he

thought, and, happily sure of this, he whispered that he hoped she had

remembered to pray for her poor mother, it was a grievous shock to feel

her shrink away from him and hear her say she hadn’t--not more than

usual, not more than her childhood’s ‘God bless my mummy,’ and most

grievous to have her ask him, just as if they weren’t in bed but

downstairs conversing in their clothes, just as if they weren’t in the

sacred place and at the sacred moment never yet profaned by talk of

anything but love, why he really thought it so dreadful for her mother

to marry again.

‘Do you not see it is terrible to marry some one young enough to be your

son?’ he had asked sternly--he couldn’t have believed he would ever have

to be stern with his own love in such a place, at such an hour.

And she had answered: ‘But is it any more terrible than marrying some

one young enough to be your daughter?’

Virginia had answered that. His Virginia. In bed. In his very arms.