There was a note of urgency in the telegram that made Catherine afraid.
Going down in the slow afternoon train, the first she could catch, which
stopped so often and so long, she had much time to think, and it seemed
to her that all this she had been doing since her marriage was curiously
shabby and disgraceful. What waste of emotions, what mean fears. Now
came real fear, and at its touch those others shrivelled up. Virginia
down there at grips with danger, being tortured--oh, she knew what
torture--just this stark fact shocked her back to vision.
She sat looking out of the window at the fields monotonously passing,
and many sharp-edged thoughts cut through her mind, and one of them was
of the last time she had gone down to Chickover, and of her gaiety
because some strange man, taken in by the cleverness with which Maria
Rome had disguised her, had obviously considered her younger than she
was. How pitiful, how pitiful; what a sign one was indeed old when a
thing like that could excite one and make one feel pleased.
She stared at this memory a moment, before it was hustled off by other
thoughts, in wonder. The stuff one filled life with! And at the faintest
stirring of Death’s wings, the smallest movement forward of that great
figure from the dark furthermost corner of the little room called life,
how instantly one’s eyes were smitten open. One became real. Was one
ever real till then? Had there to be that forward movement, that
reminder, ‘I am here, you know,’ before one could wake from one’s
strange, small dreams?
She had to wait an hour at the junction. This comforted her, for if
things had been serious the car would have been sent for her there.
It was past nine when she reached Chickover. The chauffeur who met her
looked unhappy, but could tell her nothing except that his mistress had
been ill since the morning. The avenue was dark, the great trees in
solemn row shutting out what still was left of twilight, and the house
at the end was dark too and very silent. The place seemed to be holding
its breath, as if aware of the battle being fought on the other side in
the rooms towards the garden.