On the Monday, then, a pretty little lady of about thirty to
thirty-five, whose prettiness was of the kind that is mostly disapproved
of in country places, got out of the train at Chickover, and was met by
an embarrassed clergyman.
The corners of her mouth were turned up in pleased smiles--it was so
exciting and delightful to know one was looking really nice again--as
she trotted along the platform to where he stood hesitating. She was,
besides being very glad she looked nice, very glad to be going to see
Virginia and very glad to be going back to Christopher that evening.
Also, upheld by the knowledge of her attractiveness, the journey hadn’t
tired her; on the contrary, it had been amusing, with an eagerly
friendly strange man in the carriage, concerned in every way for her
comfort. Added to which, the day being hot, she was flushed through the
fainter flush bestowed on her by Sackville Street, and this was always
becoming to her. And, finally, her eyes were bright with the gaiety that
takes hold of a woman after even a small success. So that, altogether,
it was natural she should smile.
Stephen had been prepared for anything rather than this. He had nerved
himself to a quite different encounter,--certainly not to smiles.
Bygones were to be bygones; his recent sacred experiences with Virginia
had made him ardently determined to strive after the goodness she
believed was his already, and his mother-in-law was to be received back
with as much of the old respect for her as could possibly be scraped
together. He would keep her before his mind as she used to be, and not
dwell on that which she had since become. Besides, though she might have
been happy when she wrote the postcard that had so unexpectedly
intensified his own happiness, she couldn’t, he opined, be happy now. It
was eight weeks ago that she wrote the card. Much, in marriage, may
happen in eight weeks. Eight days was sometimes enough, so he
understood, to open the eyes of the married. And here she was smiling.
‘How do you do,’ he said, grabbing at his soft hat with one hand and
nervelessly shaking her hand with the other.
‘How very nice of you to come and meet me,’ she said gaily. Funny old
Stephen. One couldn’t really be angry with him. And he was really very
good. He looked extremely old, though, after having had Christopher
before one’s eyes.
‘Not at all,’ said Stephen.
‘How is Virginia?’
‘Well.’
‘I’m so glad. I’m longing to see her. Oh, how do you do, Smithers. How
are the children? I’m so glad----’
People were staring at her. It had not yet been his lot to be in the
company of a lady people stared at. He hurried her into the car. He
tried hard to respect her.
There wasn’t much time between the station and the house for respect,
but he did try. He had thought to clear the ground for it by reassuring
her during the brief drive as to Virginia’s ignorance of the reasons
that had led to her marriage. ‘Led to’ was how he had intended to put
it, rejecting the harsher and more exact word necessitated, for he was
anxious to be as forgiving and delicate as possible, now that everybody
concerned had turned the lamentable page. Besides, who was he to judge?
Christ hadn’t judged the other woman taken in adultery.
Delicacy, however, was as difficult as respect. She herself seemed
totally without it. Also it was difficult to feel she was his
mother-in-law at all. She was curiously altered. He couldn’t make out in
what the alteration consisted. Manifestly she was aping youth, but she
was aping it, he admitted, so cleverly that if he hadn’t known her he
might certainly, at a casual glance, have taken her for a daughter
rather than a mother, though not the sort of daughter one would wish to
have.
The moment they were seated in the car she herself threw delicacy to the
winds. ‘You know, Stephen,’ she said taking his hand--he didn’t know
whether to withdraw it or behave as if he hadn’t noticed--‘good does
come in the strangest way out of evil.’
‘I am not prepared to admit that,’ Stephen felt bound to reply.
‘Oh do let’s be real friends, won’t we?’ she said, still smiling at him
and looking like somebody’s slightly undesirable daughter. ‘Then we can
<i>really</i> talk. I wanted to thank you for my great happiness----’
He tried to withdraw his hand. ‘I think perhaps----’ he began.
‘No, no--listen,’ she went on, holding it tighter. ‘If it hadn’t been
for you I never would have married Christopher and never would have had
an idea of what happiness is really like. So you see, your thinking
those wicked things of us was what brought it all about. Just like
roses, coming up and flowering divinely out of mud.’
He had made the most serious resolutions to let bygones be bygones, and
he shut his mouth in a thin tight line lest he should be unable not to
say something Virginia would be sorry for. That his mother-in-law, who
was once so dovelike, so becoming of speech and discreet of behaviour,
should suddenly slough the decencies and allude in highly distasteful
images to occurrences he was doing his utmost to forget and forgive,
that she should use, herself having been wicked, the word wicked in
connection with any thoughts of his was surely outrageous.
Yet even while he locked his mouth he remembered that it was his
mother-in-law’s postcard that had renewed and made more radiant his
Virginia’s belief in him. The service this regrettable mother-in-law had
done him was great and undeniable. She had in the past, and consciously,
done him very great service, and he had been grateful. She had eight
weeks ago done him another. Should he, because the last service had been
accidental and unconscious, not repay her? Twice over now she had helped
him to his wife. The side of him that judged, disapproved, suspected,
that was his early training and all the long years before Virginia, made
him not able to unlock his mouth; the side of him that didn’t and
wasn’t, that longed to justify Virginia’s belief in him, made him try
extraordinarily hard to unlock it. He did earnestly now desire to let
mercy prevail over justice; but, when he looked at Catherine, how hard
it was. This blooming gaiety--he used the adjective correctly, not as
Christopher would have used it--upset his plans. He had not been
prepared for it. She was not like the same person.
He sat silent, struggling within himself, and they arrived at the house
holding each other’s hands for the simple reason that he couldn’t get
his away.
There on the steps stood Virginia, as if she had never stood anywhere
else since Catherine left her on them the day she departed in
Christopher’s side-car on the momentous journey that had changed her
life; only this time Mrs. Colquhoun wasn’t standing there with her, and
Virginia had grown considerably rounder.
‘Sweet of you to come, mother,’ she said, shy and flushed, when
Catherine had run up to her and was folding as much of her as she could
in her arms.
It had not escaped Virginia that her mother and Stephen had arrived hand
in hand. She gave him a look of deep and tender gratitude when he, too,
came up the steps. He wiped his forehead. He seemed to be in a constant
condition of rousing Virginia’s gratitude for things he hadn’t done.
Really, he thought, following the two into the house, he was a worm; a
worm decked, by his darling wife’s belief, in the bright adornments of a
saint.
Virginia was much struck by her mother’s appearance. She didn’t remember
her as so pretty. She felt oddly elderly, with her awkward heavy body,
and certainly she felt completely plain beside her. Her mother looked a
little fashionable perhaps, for quiet Chickover, yet why she should
Virginia didn’t know, for she had on the same country clothes she was
wearing on her last visit and the visit before that. Her complexion was
beautiful. Virginia was quite glad Mrs. Colquhoun had had to go away
for the day on business and wouldn’t be there to see it. She felt--she
didn’t know, for Mrs. Colquhoun had never mentioned such things, but she
felt--that her mother-in-law thought women oughtn’t to have complexions
once they were--well, older.
Lunch passed off well; the talk afterwards, which included Stephen who,
anxious to be good and kind, remained with them and conversed to the
very best of his ability, passed off well; tea passed off well; and
after tea he purposely withdrew from the terrace, where they were
sitting, so as to allow mother and daughter freedom to touch on matters
of intimate feminine interest.
Then Virginia, after making her mother lie down on a long cane seat near
hers, so as to rest before the journey home, screwed herself up to
mentioning the marriage--it hadn’t yet been in any way alluded to--and
said shyly, turning red as she spoke, ‘You know, mother, I’m really very
glad about Mr.--Mr.----’
‘No, not Mr. anything, darling. Call him Christopher.’
‘Sweet of you, mother,’ said Virginia, looking so much relieved that
Catherine said, ‘What is, dearest?’
Virginia turned yet redder. ‘I was afraid,’ she said, ‘you might want me
to call him father.’
‘Oh <i>no</i>, darling,’ said Catherine, laughing nervously. ‘You couldn’t
possibly.’
And taking Virginia’s hand and stroking it, looking down at it as she
stroked, she said, ‘You don’t--you don’t think him too--too young, do
you dearest?’
‘No,’ said Virginia stoutly.
‘Darling!’ exclaimed Catherine, raising the hand she was stroking and
swiftly kissing it.
‘How can I, when Stephen and I----’
Dear, dear little Virginia. Catherine was so much pleased and touched
that she kissed Virginia’s hand over and over again. ‘My darling little
daughter,’ she said, ‘my own darling little daughter----’ and added,
and really at the moment believed it, forgetting how completely she had
been absorbed only in Christopher, ‘I have missed you so.’
Virginia at once retreated into her shell. Instinctively she felt the
lapse from truth. ‘Sweet of you, mother,’ she said in her usual awkward
little way.
She drew her hand back. It was strange, and not quite right somehow, for
her mother to be kissing it like that. It made her feel uncomfortable.
‘Wouldn’t you,’ she suggested, so as to turn the talk to practical
matters, ‘like to wash your face, mother?’
‘Wash my face?’ echoed Catherine, startled and staring at her. ‘Why?’
‘I always find cold water such a help,’ said Virginia, ‘if one is rather
tired.’
Catherine dropped back again on to her cushions. ‘Darling child,’ she
murmured, closing her eyes a minute. Cold water--on the top of the
delicate structure of Sackville Street----
No, she wouldn’t wash her face; she was quite comfortable, and not a bit
tired, and was so very, very happy to be with her little Virginia.
Virginia got further into her shell. There was a something about her
mother that she wasn’t accustomed to. She had always been a loving
mother, but not quite--not exuberant like this. Something had gone. Was
it--Virginia searched laboriously round in her scrupulous mind--dignity?
‘I mustn’t miss my train,’ said Catherine, when the church clock struck
half-past six.
‘There’s half an hour still,’ said Virginia. ‘If you leave at seven it
will be quite soon enough.’
‘It’s the last train,’ said Catherine. ‘Hadn’t the car better come round
a little before seven?’
‘If you missed it, mother, it wouldn’t matter. I could lend you
everything, and Stephen and I would be very glad.’
‘Darling,’ murmured Catherine again, concealing a shudder. She pictured
herself after the unavoidable washing, coming down next morning to
breakfast....
At a quarter to seven Stephen thought it proper to appear once more and
converse during the few remaining moments of his mother-in-law’s visit.
He had decided he would pick and offer her a bunch of roses to take home
with her; if he wasn’t able to respond to hand-holding, if he wasn’t
able, after all, to respect her, he could at least offer her roses.
Virginia would be pleased, and his own conscience slightly soothed.
Catherine began putting on her gloves.
‘Plenty of time,’ said Stephen, seeing this. ‘It has occurred to me,’ he
continued, ‘that you might like a few roses.’
‘How very nice of you, Stephen,’ said Catherine, who had planted every
one of the roses with her own hands,--‘but isn’t it too late?’
‘Plenty of time. Smithers is most trustworthy about trains. I will
gather them myself.’
And he went indoors to get a knife and a basket.
‘I’m sure I ought to go,’ said Catherine nervously to Virginia.
‘The car isn’t round yet, mother. Smithers is never late.’
‘I believe,’ said Stephen, coming out again, knife and basket in hand,
pausing on the terrace and considering the sky, ‘you will have a
comparatively cool journey back. I rather fancy there has been a
thunderstorm over towards Salisbury, and it will have cleared the air
when you arrive there.’
He went down the steps on to the lawn, and began choosing roses with
care and deliberation.
‘Virginia darling, oughtn’t I to go?’ Catherine asked, fidgeting.
‘It isn’t seven yet, mother,’ said Virginia patiently, a little hurt by
this extreme anxiety not to be obliged to spend the night with them.
Stephen on the lawn was carefully removing the thorns from the roses he
had cut.
The church clock began to strike seven. Catherine started. ‘There,’ she
exclaimed, getting up quickly, ‘I <i>must</i> go. Good-bye, darling. Never
mind the roses, Stephen,’ she called.
‘You have at least another five minutes before you need leave,’ he
called back in his sonorous, carrying voice, still going on selecting
the biggest blooms.
Kate appeared and said the car was waiting.
Catherine hurriedly bent down and kissed Virginia. ‘Good-bye,
darling--I’ll go at once. I’m sure I ought to. Don’t get up--you look so
comfy. It has been such a joy seeing you again. Stephen, I’m going--I
shall miss the train----’
‘Of course I’ll get up, mother, and see you off,’ said Virginia,
disengaging herself with difficulty from the rugs and cushions everybody
was always now burying her in. ‘Stephen,’ she called, ‘mother won’t
wait.’
Stephen hastily cut one more rose, a particularly fine one, and hurried,
infected by Catherine’s hurry, towards the terrace, stripping off the
thorns as he came. His eyes being fixed on the thorns he was stripping
off he didn’t see he had reached the steps of the terrace, and he
stumbled and fell up them, scattering the roses at Virginia’s feet.
He wasn’t in the least hurt, and indeed was on his legs immediately
again; but Virginia, who had stared at his prostrate form a moment in
silence, her hand pressed to her heart, made a queer little sound and
fainted.
Both Catherine and Stephen rushed to her. By the time help had been
called, and they had lifted her and carried her indoors and laid her on
a sofa, Catherine had missed her train.
X
In this way it happened that she stayed the night after all, and came
down next morning looking quite different. She had breakfasted in her
room, had lingered in it till the last moment, but finally was obliged
to face her relations; and they were startled.
There was neither bloom nor gaiety now. The one had vanished with the
other. Virginia thought her mother must have had far more of a shock the
evening before than had been supposed. The fainting had been
nothing,--when one was going to have a baby one did things like that,
and they were of no consequence. She had soon recovered, and they had
all three spent, Virginia thought, a very nice quiet evening afterwards,
Stephen himself going to give the orders for her mother’s room to be got
ready, and expressing the most hospitable satisfaction at her further
stay. Her mother had been a little silent, that was all; and it hadn’t
occurred to Virginia, who so soon was herself again, that she really had
had a shock.
‘Why, mother----’ she exclaimed, when Catherine came down into the
hall, ready to start.
‘I didn’t sleep,’ said Catherine, turning away her face and pretending
to search for an umbrella she hadn’t brought.
They stared at her. What a difference. Virginia was concerned. Her poor
little mother must really have been thoroughly frightened by her
fainting.
‘But mother----’ she began, taking a step towards her, wanting to say
something to reassure and comfort.
‘Oh, it’s nothing,’ said Catherine, bending over the umbrella-stand.
She was a bundle of nerves and acute sensitiveness. She felt she
couldn’t bear to be touched. And why didn’t they see that to stand there
staring....
She pulled the umbrellas in the stand about with shaking fingers,
putting off the moment of turning round to say good-bye.
It wasn’t only that she had had to wash off Maria Rome and hadn’t
slept--and indeed she hadn’t slept a wink--it was also that in the
watches of the night, of this her first night alone since her marriage,
once more in that house of long calm memories, she had seen, as she
stared into the darkness and thought of the inevitable next morning and
its humiliations, that she was on the high road to becoming a fool. Yes,
a fool; a silly fool; the sort of fool she had herself smiled at when
she was younger, the worst sort of fool, the elderly fool.
But how could she stop? Sitting up in bed she asked herself this
question. She must keep up somehow with Christopher’s youth. She
couldn’t let herself crumble into age before his eyes. If only he hadn’t
begun by admiring her physically so much! If only his love hadn’t been
based on what, adoring her, he called her exquisiteness. How difficult
it is, thought Catherine, wide awake hour after hour, to go on being
exquisite when one doesn’t sleep enough, and is tormented by fear of
one’s lover, on whom one’s entire happiness depends, suddenly seeing one
isn’t exquisite at all, but old, old. It was like being forced to run a
race that was quite beyond one’s strength, and from the beginning being
out of breath. And next morning--she knew that separated from Sackville
Street and out of reach of Maria Rome’s box she not only looked her age
but much, much more now than her age, and Stephen and Virginia would be
convinced the marriage was a bitter failure and punishment, and that
Christopher was unkind to her. Christopher unkind to her!
Christopher....
She spent an extremely unpleasant night. The house, its memories, the
prospect of next morning, forced her to think. Oh, it was unfair, unfair
and most cruel, that at last she should have been given love only when
she was too old. She ought of course never to have listened to him, to
have turned the sternest, deafest ear. But--one is vain; vanity had been
the beginning of it, the irresistibleness of the delicious flattery of
being mistaken for young, and before she knew what she was doing she had
fallen in love,--fallen flop in love, like any idiot schoolgirl. And
Christopher who didn’t realise, who hadn’t noticed yet, who loved her as
if she were a girl, and by the very excess of his love burnt up what
still had been left to her of youth.... Yes, she was a fool; but how
stop, how stop? It was horrible to be ashamed, and yet to have to go on
repeating the conduct that made one ashamed. Love--if only, only she
didn’t love!
She spent an extremely unpleasant night. No wonder she came down looking
different. It wasn’t just having had to wash away Maria Rome.
And then, while she was fumbling among the umbrellas, and Virginia was
watching her in puzzled concern, and Stephen was endeavouring to
identify the mother-in-law who had gone upstairs with the mother-in-law
who had come down again, Mrs. Colquhoun came in through the drawing-room
windows, arrived thus early across the park and garden to inquire how
Virginia was after her mother’s visit of the day before, and to gather
from Stephen what she could of his state of mind after so searching an
experience.
The situation was as awkward as it was unexpected. Stephen and Virginia
hadn’t thought she would come so early, or they would have sent round
and warned. They could only look on and hope for the best. His mother,
Stephen was aware, had decided that she, anyhow, was not obliged to
continue to know the late Mrs. Cumfrit. If and when Mrs. Cumfrit came
down to Chickover, his mother had informed him, she herself would always
have urgent business somewhere else. Morals were, without any doubt
whatever, morals, she had said, and if Stephen could reconcile his
principles with leniency in regard to them, she herself neither could
nor would.
It was therefore most unpleasant for every one that she should walk
straight into Catherine’s presence. Virginia and Stephen held their
breath. Mrs. Colquhoun gave a visible start when she saw the figure
bending over the umbrella-stand, and made as if she would go back at
once into the drawing-room from whence she had emerged. But when on
Catherine’s turning round she saw her face, she was instantly placated.
What a change. Judgment had indeed been swift. Here was nothing but a
wreck. ‘He beats her,’ was Mrs. Colquhoun’s immediate mental comment.
After all, she thought, one could leave these matters quite safely in
the hands of God.
It had not been her intention ever to speak to Catherine again, but a
wreck is different; one could not but feel benevolent towards a wreck.
If only people would be and stay wrecks Mrs. Colquhoun would always have
been benevolent. She put out her hand. She said quite politely, ‘How do
you do.’ Stephen thought, ‘My mother is a good woman’; Virginia gave a
sigh of relief; and all Catherine had to do was to reply with equal
politeness, ‘How do you do.’
But she was in a highly abnormal condition. She was a mass of nerves and
quivering intuitions. Caught, unprotected in the morning light, there
she was standing exposed before these staring relations, unable to hide,
obliged to show herself; and, with a feeling that nothing now mattered,
she was overtaken by the reckless simplicity of the cornered. Through
Mrs. Colquhoun’s greeting she felt the truth: Mrs. Colquhoun was being
amiable because she thought Catherine was down and out, and Mrs.
Colquhoun was what she was, hard, severe, critical, grudging of
happiness, kind to failure so long as it remained failure, simply
because there wasn’t a soul in the whole world who really loved her. A
devoted husband would have done much to bring out her original goodness;
a very devoted husband would have done everything.
And so, to her own astonishment, and to the frozen amazement of the
others, instead of in her turn nicely murmuring, ‘How do you do,’ and
smiling and going out to the car, she was impelled by what she saw in
Mrs. Colquhoun’s eyes as she took her extended hand, to say, ‘You need
love.’
What made her? It was the last thing she would really ever have said out
loud to Mrs. Colquhoun if she had been in her senses, so that she
couldn’t have been in her senses. Nobody in the least knew what she
meant. It sounded improper; it was most startling.
Mrs. Colquhoun withdrew the hand she ought never to have given, and
Stephen said in a strained voice, ‘We all need that,’ and added with
emphasis that it was high time to start unless the train was to be
missed again.
Virginia could only kiss her mother a worried and bewildered good-bye.
Fancy saying that to her mother-in-law. What could her mother have
meant? Of course it was true of everybody that they needed love, but one
didn’t say so.
Mrs. Colquhoun took it, she considered, very well. Turning away out of
the hall she waited in the drawing-room till the car had gone, and then
when Virginia came in begged her not to give it another thought.
‘Give what another thought?’ Virginia asked, at once bristling, as she
had lately so often bristled when with Mrs. Colquhoun, at the merest
insinuation that her mother needed either explaining or excusing.
Well, well. Poor little Virginia. One had to be very patient with her
just now.