It was the very morning after this that Stephen was late for breakfast
for the first time for years, and Virginia got down before him and found
a postcard in her mother’s handwriting among the letters, with a picture
on it of some place in the Isle of Wight and these words: <i>You have
helped me to happiness. Catherine Monckton.</i>
She stared at it puzzled. She was still more puzzled when, turning it
over again and looking at the address, she saw it was for Stephen, not
for her.
Stephen had helped her mother to happiness? It would be just like him,
of course--their reconciliation the night before had been utter and
wonderful--but how? What had he had to do with it? He who only now, only
yesterday, had come round to not disapproving any longer of the
marriage?
She was still holding the postcard in her hand, vainly trying to make
head or tail of it, when he came in.
‘It seems,’ she said, going to meet him with the quick steps and the
radiant smile of love that is very proud, ‘that I still don’t know all
your goodness, dear husband.’
‘What is it, my own wife?’ he asked, gazing at her upturned face with
the glad content of the readmitted into paradise.
‘Why, look----’ And she gave him the postcard.
He turned a deep red. She took that for modesty, and laughed with pride
in him. What he could have done and why he had done it she didn’t know,
but she loved him with a positively burning faith.
Stephen, reading the words on the postcard, deduced that the marriage,
which he had supposed had taken place a month or six weeks before, had
in fact only just done so, for he believed no lasting happiness could be
the lot of the ex-Mrs. Cumfrit, and gave her and her unfortunate victim
two or three days of it at most before remorse and disillusionment set
in. They were evidently at the very beginning of their two or three days
when the card was written. He had had no wish at all, he knew, to help
his mother-in-law to happiness. Expiation only was what he had had in
mind. That expiation should be a happiness-giving process had not
occurred to him as possible. And here was Virginia, praising and
blessing him; here was this young unsullied spirit once more making him,
by her belief and pride in his goodness, feel ashamed of himself. Also,
how awkward it was. Why could not Mrs. Cumfrit have announced she was
now Monckton in an ordinary manner, without dragging him into it?
‘Let us, my darling,’ he said, not knowing what to say and fervently
wishing he really had done something to deserve the look of proud
adoration on Virginia’s face, ‘have breakfast. Otherwise it will be
cold. And I am as hungry as a----’ he was going to say hunter, but it
sounded too unclerical, so he said rector instead; and they both
laughed, being in the mood, that happy morning, when one laughs at
anything.
She brought his coffee round to him, and stood behind his chair laying
her cheek on his head. ‘You’ve got to confess, you know,’ she said,
‘however much you want to hide your light under a bushel. What did you
do, Stephen darling, and why have we been so miserable all this time
about mother’s marrying, when it was really you who----?’
‘I’ll confess to you, my love, that I did enjoin marriage.’
‘You did? Then why----?’
‘Virginia, love, you trust your husband?’
‘Oh, Stephen--so <i>absolutely</i>!’ she cried, putting her arms round his
neck.
‘Then if I ask you not to question me further on this matter?’ he said,
stroking the hand round his neck and looking up at the face so near his
own.
‘Oh Stephen--ask me something harder than that. I do so long to show
what I would do for you. I do so long to be more like you----’
‘My darling, God forbid,’ said Stephen very earnestly.
‘Oh Stephen----’ was all Virginia could say to a modesty, a humility so
profound. She had married not only a lover but a saint.
Her cup was full. To be asked by Stephen not to question him ... she
went about as dumb as a mouse. To be asked by Stephen to believe in him
... she went about bursting with belief. And she was so happy, restored
to her husband after the black separation, that she didn’t even any
longer mind the idea of Christopher as a stepfather; and her happiness
spilt over into the letter she wrote her mother asking them both to
Chickover; and it was such a warm letter that Catherine, accustomed in
her relations with Virginia to provide all the warmth, was as much
puzzled as Virginia had been on reading the postcard to Stephen.
That Virginia, who rarely showed warmth, should show it now was really
very puzzling. But, being at the moment in the first astonishment at
the joy of falling in love, Catherine had no time for anything or any
one but Christopher, and didn’t think about Virginia’s letter for long.
She scribbled a little note--‘<i>Thank you, darling, for your letter. We
shall love to come some day</i>’--and forgot her. Nor did she remember her
again, or think of Chickover and Stephen and all that strange dim life,
till the Fanshawes’ visit.
On that visit almost everything the Fanshawes said seemed to produce a
climax. Their innocent questions were all, except one, very difficult to
answer, and their comments could mostly only be met by silence. The one
question that wasn’t difficult was, ‘Have you been to Chickover with him
yet?’--for the warm, forgotten invitation came back to Catherine’s mind
at these words; and though at the moment the Fanshawes hadn’t given her
time to answer, afterwards, before they left, when all the naturalness
and glow had gone out of their visit and everybody was elaborately
making conversation, she announced that Virginia had written urging them
to go down as soon as possible and stay a long while, and that they
thought of soon going.
At this Christopher had made a face at her, indicative of his amazement,
for it was the first he had heard of any such invitation or visit; and
Mrs. Fanshawe asked, ‘Have Virginia and Mr. Monckton already met?’--a
little timidly, for by this time she too felt that any question was
likely to turn out to be a bombshell.
‘Oh yes,’ said Catherine, reddening again, a vision of that meeting
flashing before her eyes--the Chickover drawing-room, herself coming in
ready to start for London and finding three figures in it, figures stiff
and silent as three hostile pokers.
Upon which the Fanshawes decided that there were things and people in
life they couldn’t understand, and gave up trying to. But their bosoms
were benevolent, and the only criticism they permitted themselves was
that Virginia, whom they didn’t know, must be a little unusual.