Chapter XI: Part II: I (4)

She succeeded. Christopher did enjoy himself. Here was a girl who was clever as well as pretty, delightful to talk to as well as delightful to look at. In ten minutes he felt as if they were old friends. She asked him if he had any Scandinavian blood in him, because that was what he looked like,--rather her idea of a sun-kissed young Norse god; and he retorted by asking her if she had any Greek blood in her, because that was what she looked like,--rather his idea of a sun-kissed young Greek goddess; and they laughed, and were pleased with each other. Aphrodite for choice, said Christopher warming to his work, and glancing first at Emily’s hair and then at her justly celebrated eyes; Aphrodite was fair too, and had eyes like the sea too, he said; all the most beautiful women were fair and had eyes like the sea, he said.

Emily was much pleased.

Sir Musgrove, catching the word Aphrodite, tried to chime in, for he was not only a well-known Greek scholar, engaged at that very moment in writing an inquiry into the mythologies, but he would have been interested to discuss the delicious goddess with Miss Wickford. Duncan Amory also tried to chime in, with a story about an American lady who by some mix-up at her baptism got christened Aphrodite, and the effect it had on her afterwards. It wasn’t a bad story, and anyhow it was apt, and he felt aggrieved that nobody listened to it except the Fanshawes. The others were absorbed in watching Emily. Emily wasn’t at all a good person to have at a party, thought Amory. She absorbed attention. Her proper place was a <i>tête-à-tête</i>. That was how he himself chiefly cultivated her. He shrugged his shoulders, and turned resolutely to Mrs. Fanshawe.

Lady Merriman was bored. Able and willing to talk about anything,--book, play, picture or politician--she found herself, because of Miss Wickford, left with only half a man; half of Ned Fanshawe, too, who even when he was whole had more of good nature than of conversation. And she wished very much to talk to this young Mr. Monckton and find out for herself what could have induced that middle-aged woman to be so reckless as to marry him. However, he was engrossed. Natural, she supposed, at his age. What wasn’t so natural was that Musgrove was engrossed too. He would talk to neither of his neighbours, and had eyes and ears only for Miss Wickford.

Lady Merriman, who was fond of Musgrove, and had been faithfully and patiently through the thick and the thin of him for twenty-five years, was a little put out; not on her own account, for nothing, she knew, could alter his complete private dependence on her, but on his. She didn’t like her man, who was anything but silly, to look it. Also, she did wish he would amuse poor Mrs. Monckton, and distract her attention from what that boy of hers was saying to Miss Wickford. Marriage, thought Lady Merriman, observing the expression on Musgrove’s face and observing the expression on Catherine’s, was rich in humiliations. If one allowed it to be, that is; if one didn’t keep them out by the only real defence--laughter.

The band began to play a fox-trot. One or two active young people got up from neighbouring tables and danced.

‘Will you dance?’ Christopher asked Miss Wickford.

‘I’d adore to,’ she answered, getting up just as the waiter put a nice hot quail on her plate. ‘May we?’ she asked, smiling at Mrs. Fanshawe, and floating off without waiting for an answer.

‘Ah, youth, youth,’ said Sir Musgrove, shaking his head indulgently. ‘And we greybeards console ourselves with quails.’

This was tactless of Musgrove, Mrs. Fanshawe considered, and she protested.

‘There are no greybeards here,’ protested Mrs. Fanshawe with great vigour.

‘Ah well--I speak allegorically,’ said Sir Musgrove, following Miss Wickford’s movements as she exquisitely gyrated in Christopher’s arms.

‘I should eat your quail before it gets cold, Musgrove,’ said his wife,--it was all Martha’s fault for not having put such effervescent guests on the sofa, safe behind the table where they couldn’t have got out. But some one ought to tell Mrs. Monckton not to look quite so....

‘Personally, I think it foolish to interrupt a good dinner and let it get cold,’ said Duncan Amory, who didn’t at all like the way Emily was behaving.

‘My dear friend, they are at the golden age when dinner is of no consequence,’ said Sir Musgrove. ‘A good-looking couple--a very good-looking couple,’ he added dreamily, his eye on Emily.

Well, really--hadn’t Musgrove grasped the fact that the young man was Mrs. Monckton’s husband? thought Lady Merriman, trying to catch the eye that was fixed so persistently on Miss Wickford.

The Fanshawes saw their mistake, and were repenting bitterly. Of course Emily Wickford should have been put on the sofa. Better still, not asked at all. She was ruining the party for every one except Catherine’s husband. Duncan Amory, usually such good company, was sulking; Musgrove--they couldn’t have believed it of him; Lydia Merriman--naturally she was vexed; Catherine--well, they hardly liked to look at her.

The band left off playing, and the couples all came back except Christopher and Miss Wickford. They disappeared through the arch into the next room, Emily smiling back over her shoulder at her hosts, and Christopher holding up an explanatory cigarette case.

It was Emily who proposed this. She said she didn’t want any more dinner, and thought it much more fun not to sit cooped up at that table, with which Christopher heartily agreed.

‘They all seem so old,’ said Emily, bending forward for him to light her cigarette. ‘Don’t you think so?’

‘Fossils,’ said Christopher, forgetting in his admiration of the face being lit up by the match he was holding, that Catherine was one of them, but he did ask, after a minute, whether she didn’t think the Fanshawes would mind their not going back.

‘Oh, they never mind anything,’ said Emily easily. ‘They’re darlings.’

The Fanshawes, however, did mind this. They fumed. It was a stricken party that remained at the table. Mrs. Fanshawe was casting her mind back to whether Emily knew Christopher was Catherine’s husband, and couldn’t remember that she had made this clear when she introduced them. But how, after all, could one make a thing like that clear, short of taking the other person aside and explaining in a whisper? Just to say, ‘And this is Mr. Monckton,’ after having introduced somebody to Mrs. Monckton wasn’t in this case, she was afraid, enough. On the other hand one couldn’t introduce him as Mrs. Monckton’s husband. Still, instinct ought to have told Emily. Mrs. Fanshawe, who never was unfair, was unfair now. She was angry. She was the last person in the world to grudge young people having a good time, and was of an easy-goingness that verged on laxity; but this deeply annoyed her, this carrying off of Christopher. Also, she considered that Christopher oughtn’t to have let himself be carried off. He, at any rate, knew he was Catherine’s husband.

It was a stricken party. Ned was furious, Sir Musgrove fidgeted, Duncan Amory sulked, and Catherine seemed to be shrivelling smaller before their very eyes. Only Lady Merriman and Mrs. Fanshawe talked,--across the table to each other, gallantly, after the manner of women, trying to cover things up.

The music began again, and everybody watched the arch. It was some time before the two appeared, and when they did they were talking and laughing as happily as ever.

‘Come here--you are very unkind, you two, deserting us like this,’ Mrs. Fanshawe called out to them as they danced past; but they didn’t hear, and danced on.

At the end, when the party was breaking up, Miss Wickford, who had enjoyed her evening immensely, said to Christopher, ‘Come and see me on Sunday.’

‘No--you come to us,’ he answered.

She looked at him surprised. ‘But wouldn’t that bore your mother dreadfully?’ she asked.

‘Bore my mother?’ echoed Christopher, staring. ‘What mother?’

‘Why, isn’t----’

Miss Wickford broke off, instinctively feeling she was somehow getting into trouble. That little made-up Mrs. Monckton on the sofa--wasn’t she the boy’s mother?

‘My mother died when I was three,’ said Christopher.

‘Poor you,’ murmured Miss Wickford non-commitally: something warned her to be cautious.

‘But my wife will be delighted if you’ll come.’

There was the briefest silence. Then Emily managed to say, without, she trusted, showing her astonishment, ‘How perfectly sweet of her. I’ll ring up and ask.’

XIV

She never did. And it was just as well, thought Christopher, for Catherine had, most astoundingly, taken it into her head to be jealous of her. She wouldn’t admit she was, and professed immense admiration for Miss Wickford’s beauty, but if the emotion she showed after that dinner wasn’t jealousy he was blest if he knew what jealousy was.

It amazed him. She might have heard every word he said. Miss Wickford was extremely pretty and quite clever, and why shouldn’t he like talking to her? But he was very sorry to have made Catherine unhappy, and did all he knew to make her forget it; only it was suffocating sort of work in hot weather, and he felt as if he were tied up in something very sweet and sticky, with no end to it. Rather like treacle. It was rather like being swathed round with bands of treacle.

He came to the conclusion Catherine loved him too much. Yes, she did. If she loved him more reasonably she would be much happier, and so would he. It was bad for them both. The flat seemed thick with love. One waded. He caught himself putting up his hand to unbutton his collar. Perhaps the stuffy weather had something to do with it. July was getting near its end, and there was no air at all in Hertford Street. London was a rotten place in July. He always walked to his office and back so as to get what exercise he could, and every Saturday they went down to his uncle for golf; but what was that? He ached to be properly stretched, to stride about, to hit things for days on end, and his talk became almost exclusively of holidays, and where they should go in August when his were due.

Lewes was going to Scotland to play golf. He had gone with Lewes last year, and had had a glorious time. What exercise! What talk! What freedom! He longed to go again, and asked Catherine whether she wouldn’t like to; and she said, with that hiding look of hers--there was a certain look, very frequent on her face, he called to himself her <i>hiding</i> look--that it was too far from Virginia.

Virginia? Christopher was much surprised. What did she want with Virginia? Short of actually being at Chickover, she wouldn’t see Virginia anyhow, he said; and she, with her arms round his neck, said that was true, but she didn’t want to be out of reach of her.

This unexpected reappearance of Virginia on the scene, this sudden cropping up of her after a long spell of no mention of the girl, puzzled and irritated him. They would, apparently, have gone to Scotland if it hadn’t been for Virginia. Must he then too--of course he must, seeing that he couldn’t and wouldn’t go away without Catherine--be kept hanging round within reach of Virginia? She was the last object he wished to be within reach of.

He was annoyed, and showed it. ‘Why this recrudescence,’ he asked, ‘of maternal love?’

‘It isn’t a recrudescence--it’s always, Chris darling,’ she said, looking rather shamefacedly at him, he thought--anyhow queerly. ‘You don’t suppose one ever leaves off loving somebody one really loves?’

No, he didn’t suppose it. He was sure she wouldn’t. But he wasn’t going into that now; he wasn’t going, at ten in the morning, to begin talking about love.

‘It’s time I was off,’ he said, bending down and kissing her quickly. ‘I’m late as it is.’

He hurried out, though he wasn’t late. He knew he wasn’t late, only he did want to get into what air there was,--into, anyhow, sunlight, out of that darkened bedroom.

She too knew he wasn’t late, but she too wanted him for once to go, because she had a secret appointment for half-past ten, and it was ten already; a most important, a vital appointment, the bare thought of which thrilled her with both fear and hope.

She didn’t know if anything would come of it, but she was going to try. She had written to the great man and told him her age and asked if he thought he could do anything for her, and he had sent a card back briefly indicating 10.30 on this day. Nothing more: just 10.30. How discreet. How exciting.

She had read about him in the papers. He was a Spanish doctor, come over to London for a few weeks, and he undertook to restore youth. Marvellous, blissful, if he really could! A slight operation, said the papers, and there you were. The results were most satisfactory, they affirmed, and in some cases miraculous. Suppose her case were to be one of the miraculous ones? She hadn’t the least idea how she would be able to have an operation without Christopher knowing, but all that could be thought out afterwards. The first thing to do was to see the doctor and hear what he had to say. Who wouldn’t do anything, take any pains, have any operation, to be helped back to youth? She, certainly, would shrink from nothing. And it sounded so genuine, so scientific, what the doctor, according to the papers, did.

The minute Christopher had gone she hurried into her clothes, refused breakfast, hadn’t time to do her face--better she shouldn’t that day, better she should be seen exactly as she really was--and twenty minutes after he left she was in a taxi on the way to the great man’s temporary consulting rooms in Portland Place.

With what a beating heart she rang the bell. Such hopes, such fears, such determination, such shrinking, all mixed up together, as well as being ashamed, made her hardly able to speak when the nurse--she looked like a nurse--opened the door. And suppose somebody should hear her when she said who she was? And suppose somebody she knew should see her going in? If ever there was a discreet and private occasion it was this one; so that the moment the door was opened she was in such a hurry to get in out of sight of the street that she almost tumbled into the arms of the nurse.

It gave her an unpleasant shock to find herself put into a room with several other people. She hadn’t thought she would have to face other seekers after youth. There ought to have been cubicles--places with screens. It didn’t seem decent to expose the seekers to one another like that; and she shrank down into a chair with her back to the light, and buried her head in a newspaper.

The others were all burying their heads too in newspapers, but they saw each other nevertheless. All men, she noticed, and all so old that surely they must be past any hopes and wishes? What could they want with youth? It was a sad sight, thought Catherine, peeping round her newspaper, and she felt shocked. When presently two women came in, and after a furtive glance round dropped as she had done into chairs with their backs to the light, she considered them sad sights too and felt shocked; while for their part they were thinking just the same of her, and all the men behind their newspapers were saying to themselves, ‘What fools women are.’

The nurse--she looked exactly like a nurse--came in after a long while and beckoned to her, not calling out her name, for which she was thankful, and she was shown into the consulting room, and found herself confronted by two men instead of one, because Dr. Sanguesa, the specialist, could only say three words in English--‘We will see’ were his words--so that there was another man there, dark and foreign-looking too, but voluble in English, to interpret.

He did the business part as well. ‘It will cost fifty pounds,’ he said almost immediately.

In a whole year Catherine had only ten of these for everything, but if the treatment had been going to cost all ten she would have agreed, and lived somehow in an attic, on a crust--with Christopher and youth. Indeed, she thought it very cheap. Surely fifty pounds was cheap for youth?

‘Twenty-five pounds down,’ said the partner--she decided he was more a partner than an interpreter--‘and twenty-five pounds in the middle of the treatment.’

‘Certainly,’ she murmured.

Dr. Sanguesa was observing her while the partner talked. Every now and then he said something in Spanish, and the other asked her a question. The questions were intimate and embarrassing,--the kind it is more comfortable to reply to to one person rather than two. However, she was in for it; she mustn’t mind; she was determined not to mind anything.

In her turn she asked some questions, forcing herself to be courageous, for she was frightened in spite of her determination and hopes. Would it hurt, she asked timidly; would it take long; when would the results begin?

‘We will see,’ said Dr. Sanguesa, who hadn’t understood a word, nodding his head gravely.

It would not hurt, said the partner, because in the case of women it was dangerous to operate, and the treatment was purely external; it would take six weeks, with two treatments a week; she would begin to see a marked difference in her appearance after the fourth treatment.

The fourth treatment? That would be in a fortnight. And no operation? How wonderful. She caught her breath with excitement. In a fortnight she would be beginning to look younger. After that, every day younger and younger. No more Maria Rome, no more painful care over her dressing, no more fear of getting tired because of how ghastly it made her look, but the real thing, the real glorious thing itself.

‘Shall I <i>feel</i> young?’ she asked, eagerly now.

‘Of course. Everything goes together. You understand--a woman’s youth, and accordingly her looks, depends entirely on----’

The partner launched into a rapid explanation which was only saved from being excessively improper by its technical language. Dr. Sanguesa sat silent, his elbows on the arms of his revolving chair, his finger-tips together. He looked a remote, unfriended, melancholy man, rather like the pictures she had seen of Napoleon III., with dark shadows under his heavy eyes and a waxen skin. Every now and then his sad mouth opened, and he said quite automatically, ‘We will see,’ and shut it again.

She wanted to begin at once. It appeared she must be examined first, to find out if she could stand the treatment. This rather frightened her again. Why? How? Was the treatment so severe? What was it?

‘We will see,’ said Dr. Sanguesa, nodding.

The partner became voluble, waving his hands about. Not at all--not at all severe; a matter of X-rays merely; but sometimes, if a woman’s heart was weak----

Catherine said she was sure her heart wasn’t weak.

‘We will see,’ said Dr. Sanguesa, mechanically nodding.

‘The examination is three guineas,’ said the partner.

‘Three more, or three of the same ones?’ asked Catherine, rather stupidly.

‘We will s----’

The partner interrupted him this time with a quickly lifted hand. He seemed to think Catherine’s question was below the level of both his and her dignities and intelligences, for he looked as if he were a little ashamed of her as he said stiffly, ‘Three more.’

She bowed her head. She would have bowed her head to anything, if these men in exchange would give her youth.

The examination could be made at once, the partner said, if she was ready.

Yes, she was quite ready.

She got up instantly. They were used to eagerness, especially in the women patients, but this was a greater eagerness than usual. Dr. Sanguesa’s sombre, sunken eyes observed her thoughtfully. He said something in Spanish to his partner, who shook his head. Catherine had the impression it was something he wished interpreted, and she looked inquiringly at the partner, but he said nothing, and went to the door and opened it for her.

She was taken upstairs into a sort of Rose du Barri boudoir, arranged with a dressing-table and looking-glasses, and another nurse--at least, she too looked like one--helped her to undress. Then she was wrapped in a dressing-gown--she didn’t like this public dressing-gown against her skin--and led into a room fitted up with many strange machines and an operating table. What will not a woman do, she thought, eyeing these objects with misgiving, and her heart well down somewhere near her feet, for the man she loves?

Dr. Sanguesa came in, all covered up in white like an angel. The partner, she was thankful to notice, didn’t appear. She was examined with great care, the nurse smiling encouragingly. It was a relief to be told by the nurse, who interpreted, that her heart was sound and her lungs perfect, even though she had never supposed they weren’t. At the end the nurse told her the doctor was satisfied she could stand the treatment, and asked when she would like to begin.

Catherine said she would begin at once.

Impossible. The next day?

Oh yes, yes--the next day. And would she really--she was going to say look nice again, but said instead feel less tired?

‘It’s wonderful how different people feel,’ the nurse assured her; and Dr. Sanguesa nodded gravely, without having understood a word, and said, ‘We will see.’

‘He hasn’t tried it on himself, has he?’ remarked Catherine, when she was in the Rose du Barri room again, dressing.

The nurse laughed. She was a jolly-looking young woman,--but perhaps she was really an old woman, who had had the treatment.

‘Have <i>you</i> been done?’ asked Catherine.

The nurse laughed again. ‘I shall be if I see I’m getting old,’ she said.

‘It really <i>is</i> wonderful?’ asked Catherine, whose hands as she fastened her hooks were trembling with excitement.

‘You wouldn’t believe it,’ said the nurse earnestly. ‘I’ve seen men of seventy looking and behaving not a day more than forty.’

‘That’s thirty years off,’ said Catherine. ‘And supposing they were forty to begin with, would they have looked and behaved like ten?’

‘Ah well, that’s a little much to expect, isn’t it,’ said the nurse, laughing again.

‘I’m forty-seven. I wouldn’t at all like to end by being seven.’

‘Your husband would pack you off to a kindergarten, wouldn’t he,’ said the nurse, laughing more than ever.

Catherine laughed too. She was so full of hope that she already felt younger. But when she put on her hat before the glass she saw she didn’t anyhow look it.

‘Don’t I look <i>too</i> awful,’ she said, turning round frankly to the friendly nurse, who, after all, was going to be the witness of her triumphant progress backwards through the years.

‘We’ll soon get rid of all that,’ said the nurse gaily.

Catherine quite loved the nurse.

XV

It was an exciting life during the next week,--so much to plan, so much to arrange, and she herself buoyant with hope and delight. She couldn’t, of course, leave London during her treatment, so to Christopher’s astonishment she urged him to go to Scotland without her.

‘But Catherine----’

He couldn’t believe his own ears.

‘Go and have a good time, Chris darling.’

‘Without you?’

‘I must stay in London.’

‘In <i>London</i>?’

‘Yes. Virginia may want me.’

‘Now what in God’s name, Catherine, is all this about Virginia. The other day----’

Then she told him, secure in the knowledge that she was so soon going to be young again--she didn’t in the least mind being a grandmother if she wasn’t going to look like one; on the contrary, to look like a girl and yet be a grandmother struck her as to the last degree chic--that Virginia was expecting a baby in September, and as babies sometimes appeared before they ought she must be within reach.

Well, that was all right; he understood that. What he didn’t understand was Catherine’s detachment. Why, she seemed not to mind his leaving her. He couldn’t believe it. And when it became finally evident that such was her real attitude and no pretence at all about it, he was deeply hurt. Incredibly, she genuinely wanted him to go.

‘You love Virginia more than me,’ he said, his heart suddenly hot with jealousy.

‘Oh Chris, don’t be silly,’ said Catherine impatiently.

She had never since their marriage told him not to be silly in that sensible, matter-of-fact way. What had come over her? He, who had been feeling he couldn’t breathe for all the love there was about, now found himself gasping for want of it. The atmosphere had suddenly gone clear and rarefied. Catherine seemed to be thinking of something that wasn’t him, and once or twice forgot to kiss him. Forgot to kiss him! He was deeply wounded. And she was so unaccountably cheerful too. She not only seemed to be thinking of something else but seemed amused by it, hugging whatever it was with delight. She was excited. What was she excited about? Surely not because she was going to be a grandmother? Surely that would make her brood more than ever on the difference in their ages?

‘She wants me to go to Scotland with you,’ he said, bursting in one day on Lewes. ‘She wants me to go away without her. Doesn’t care a hang. Four solid weeks. The whole of August.’

‘How sensible,’ said Lewes, not looking up from his work.

‘It’s that beastly baby.’

‘Baby?’ Lewes did look up.

‘Due in September.’

‘What? But surely----’

‘Oh, don’t be a fool. Virginia’s. She won’t leave London. Why she can’t go somewhere round near Chickover, where I could go too and be with her and get some golf as well--Lewes, old man, I believe she’s fed up with me.’

And he stared at Lewes with hot eyes.

In his turn Lewes told him not to be a fool; but the mere thought of Catherine, his Catherine, being fed up with him as he put it, sent him rushing back to her to see if it could possibly be true.

She was so airy, so much detached.

‘Now Chris, don’t be absurd. Of course you must have a good holiday and get out of London. It’s lucky that you have your friend to go with----’

That was the sort of thing.

‘But Catherine, how can you want me to? Don’t you love me any more?’

‘Of course I love you. Which is why I want you to go to Scotland.’

This was true. The treatment was being gone through for love of him, and he must go to Scotland because of the treatment. She was to have as much quiet as possible during it--‘No husbands,’ said Dr. Sanguesa--‘You’ve got to be a grass widow for a little while,’ interpreted the nurse--‘You must go to Scotland,’ still further interpreted Catherine.

But he couldn’t go at once. It was still only July. The first two treatments took place while Christopher was still in London, and as it was impossible without rousing his suspicions to keep him entirely at arm’s length, she wasn’t surprised when the effect of them was to make her feel more tired than ever.

‘It’s often like that to begin with,’ encouraged the nurse. ‘Especially if you’re not having complete rest from worries at home.’

Did she mean husbands by worries, Catherine wondered? There certainly wasn’t complete rest from that sort of worry, then, for Christopher, as Catherine apparently cooled, became more and more as he used to be, and possessed by the fear that he was somehow losing her rediscovered how much he loved her.

He had, of course, always intensely loved her, but he had felt the need of pauses. In her love there had been no pauses, and gradually the idea of suffocation had got hold of him. Now, so suddenly, so unaccountably, she seemed to be all pause. She tried to avoid him; she even suggested, on the plea that the nights were hot, that he should sleep in the dressing-room.

Whatever else he had tired of he hadn’t yet tired of the sweetness, the curious comfort and reassurance, of going to sleep with his arms round her. Since their marriage there had been no interruption in his wish to cling at night; what he hadn’t wanted was to be clung to in the morning. One felt so different in the morning; at least, he did. Catherine didn’t; and it was this that had given him the impression of stifling in treacle. Now she not only showed no wish at all to cling in the morning, but she tried--he wouldn’t and couldn’t believe it, but had to--to wriggle out of being clung to at night.

‘Catherine, what is it? What has come between us?’ he asked, his eyes hurt and indignant,--when Catherine had asked this sort of question, as she had on first noticing a different quality in his love-making, he had been impatient and bored, and thought in his heart ‘How like all women,’ but of course he didn’t remember this.

‘Oh Chris, why are you so silly?’ she answered, laughing and pushing him away. ‘Don’t you feel how hot it is, and how much nicer not to be too close together? Let us be sanitary.’

Sanitary? That was a pleasant way of putting it. She was going back to what she used to be at first, when he had such difficulty in getting hold of her at all,--going back into just being an intelligent little stand-offish thing, independent, and determined to have nothing to do with him. How he had worshipped her in those days of her unattainableness. Her relapse now into what threatened to become unattainableness all over again didn’t make him worship her, because that had been the kind of worship that never returns, but it lit his love up again, while at the same time filling him with a fury of possessiveness. A thwarted possessiveness, however; she evaded him more and more.

‘I can’t go to Scotland and leave you. Damn golf. I simply can’t,’ he said at last.

And she, as cool as a little cucumber and as bright as a gay little button--the comparisons were his--told him he simply had to, and that when he came back he would find they were going to be happier than ever.

‘You’ll love me more than ever,’ she said laughing, for though the treatment was extraordinarily exhausting her spirits those days were bright with faith.

‘Rot. Nobody could love you more than I do now, so what’s the good of talking like that? Catherine, what has happened to you? Tell me.’

And there he was, just as he used to be, on the floor at her feet, his arms clasping her knees, his head on her lap.

All this made Catherine very happy. She began to see benefits in the treatment other than the ones Dr. Sanguesa had guaranteed.

XVI

He went to Scotland, and she stayed in London. She was inexorable. It was as if his soft, enveloping pillow had turned into a rock. She lied at last--how avoid lying, sooner or later, when one was married?--so as to get rid of him, for he was insisting on taking rooms for them both at the sea near Chickover, where she could be within reach of Virginia and yet not away from him. Driven into this corner what could she do but lie? It is what one does in corners, she thought, excusing herself. She told him Virginia was probably coming up to London to have her baby in a nursing home, and that was why she couldn’t go away.

He went off puzzled and unhappy, and his unhappiness filled her with secret joy. What balm to her spirit, which had lately been so anxious, to see all these unmistakable symptoms of devoted love in him. And she pictured his return in September, and herself at the station to meet him, changed, young, able to do everything with him, a fit mate for him at last.

‘You’ll never, never know how much I love you,’ she said, her arms round his neck when she said good-bye.

‘It looks like it, doesn’t it,’ he said gloomily.

‘Exactly like it,’ she laughed. She was always laughing now, just as she used always to be laughing at their very first meetings.

‘I can’t make it out,’ he said, looking down at her upturned face. ‘You’re sending me away. Suppose I meet that girl up there--Miss Wickford, or that other one who looked like a shark--I should comfort myself.’

Even that only made her laugh. ‘Do, Chris darling,’ she said, patting his face. ‘And then come back and tell me all about it.’

She <i>was</i> changed. He went away extremely miserable, and Lewes’s talk--that talk he had thirsted for when he thought he wasn’t going to get it--seemed like just so much gritty drivel.

Left alone in London Catherine gave herself up entirely to the treatment. Twice a week she went to Portland Place and suffered,--for it hurt, though Dr. Sanguesa told her through the nurse that it didn’t. They laid her on a table, and a great machine was lowered to within a hair’s breadth of her bare skin, her eyes were bandaged, and crackling things--she couldn’t see what, but they sounded like sparks and felt like little bright stabbing knives--were let loose on her for half an hour at a stretch, first on one side of her and then on the other. When this was over she was injected with some mysterious fluid, and then went home completely exhausted.

All day afterwards she lay on her sofa, and Mrs. Mitcham brought her trays of nourishing food. She read and slept. She went to bed at nine o’clock. She did nothing to her face after Christopher had gone, and Mrs. Mitcham, looking at her and seeing her so persistently yellow, asked her with growing concern if she felt quite well.

After the fourth treatment she was to begin and see a difference. How anxiously she scanned herself in the glass. Nothing. And her body felt exactly as her face looked,--amazingly weary.

‘It takes longer with some people,’ said the nurse, when Catherine commented on this on her fifth visit. ‘There was one lady came here who noticed nothing at all till just before the end, and then you should have seen her. Why, she skipped out of that door. And sixty, if a day.’

‘Perhaps I’m not old enough,’ said Catherine. ‘All the people you tell me about are sixty or seventy.’

She was sitting on the sofa of the Rose du Barri boudoir being dressed. She was too tired to stand up. Those crackles, going on for half an hour, were a great strain on her endurance. They didn’t hurt enough to make her cry out, but enough to make her need all her determination not to.

The nurse laughed. ‘Well, we <i>are</i> depressed to-day, aren’t we,’ she said brightly. ‘People do get like that about half-way through--the slow ones, I mean, who don’t react at once as some do. You’ll see. Rome wasn’t built in a day.’

The next time she came the nurse flung up both hands on seeing her. ‘Why, aren’t you looking well this morning!’ she cried.

Catherine hurried to the glass. ‘Am I?’ she said, staring at herself.

‘<i>Such</i> a change,’ said the nurse with every sign of pleasure. ‘I was sure it would begin soon. Now you’ll see it going on more and more quickly every day.’

‘Shall I?’ said Catherine, scrutinising the face in the glass.

For the life of her she could see no difference. She said so. The nurse laughed at her.

‘Oh, you doubting Thomas,’ said the nurse, whose friendliness had flowered into a robust familiarity. ‘Just look at yourself now. Don’t you see?’ And she took her by the shoulders and twisted her round to the glass again.

No, Catherine didn’t see. She saw the nurse’s laughing, rosy face close to hers, and hers yellow and pale-lipped,--just as it always was now when nothing out of Maria Rome’s box had been put on it. Maria Rome had had a terrible effect on her. Her hair was startlingly more grey, now that the dye had had time to wear off, than it used to be before any was put on.

‘It’s the trained eye that can tell,’ said the nurse brightly. ‘I notice a <i>great</i> change.’

‘Do you?’ was all Catherine could say.

That day she seemed so much more quiet and tired than usual, lying on her sofa in the flat and not even reading, that Mrs. Mitcham, who hadn’t been at all happy about her since Christopher’s departure, asked her if it wouldn’t be a good plan to see a doctor.

Catherine couldn’t help smiling at this. Why, that was what was the matter with her, that she <i>was</i> seeing a doctor.

‘I shall be all right soon,’ she assured Mrs. Mitcham; for she still hoped.

It wasn’t till after the ninth treatment that her hopes began to grow definitely pale. Nothing had happened. She was just as old as ever; older, if anything, for those stabbing sparks made her brace herself to an endurance that left her utterly exhausted. The nurse, it is true, continued stoutly to express delighted surprise each time she saw her, but this merely caused Catherine to distrust either her sincerity or her eyesight. She became more silent and less interested in the tales about other old ladies. Their alleged skipping began to leave her cold. It was possible, of course, that they had skipped, but she wasn’t able to bring herself to believe in it really.

‘Those other old ladies----’ she said, on her eleventh visit.

The nurse interrupted her with a gay burst of laughter. ‘You’re never going to class yourself with old ladies?’ she cried. ‘Now, Mrs. Monckton, that’s really naughty of you. I won’t allow it. I shall have to scold you soon, you know.’

‘Well, but this is my eleventh time, and you said they were all skipping by their eleventh time----’

‘Not all. Come, come now. It takes people differently, you know.’

Not that I want to skip,’ said Catherine, wearily pinning up a strand of hair the eye-bandage had loosened. ‘It’s that I don’t feel the least shred of the remotest desire to.’

‘That’ll come. It’ll all come in time.’

‘In what time?’ asked Catherine. ‘I’ve only got one treatment more.’

‘It often happens that people feel the benefit afterwards. Weeks, perhaps, afterwards. They wake up one morning, and find themselves suddenly quite young.’

Catherine said nothing to this. Her hopes had flickered very small by now.

The nurse, as jolly as ever, rallied her and laughed at her for being so ungrateful, when she only had to look at herself to see----

‘I’m always looking at myself, and I never see,’ said Catherine.

‘Oh, <i>aren’t</i> you a naughty little thing!’ cried the nurse. ‘I don’t know what would become of poor Dr. Sanguesa if all his patients were as obstinately blind as you. Well, there’s still Thursday. Sometimes the last treatment of all convinces the patient, and we shall have you writing us wonderful testimonials----’

There was no response to this gaiety. Catherine went away heavy-footed. She was poorer by fifty pounds, Christopher was coming home in a week, and that bright dream of meeting him at the station seemed to the last degree unlikely to be realised. Useless for the nurse to pretend there was a difference in her; there was none. Perhaps if she hadn’t pretended Catherine would have been more able to believe. But the nurse treating her like a fool--well, but wasn’t that precisely what she was? Wasn’t any woman a fool who could suppose that she could be stirred up to youth again by showers of stabbing crackles?

She went home heavy-footed and ashamed. Trouble, expense, disappointment, an intolerable long separation from Christopher,--that was all she had got out of this. Oh yes--she had got the useful knowledge that she was a fool; but she had had that before.

Still, she wouldn’t quite give up hope yet. There was one more treatment, and it might well be that she would suddenly take a turn....

But she never had the final treatment, and never saw either Dr. Sanguesa or the nurse again; for when she got home that day, she found a telegram from Mrs. Colquhoun, asking her to come to Chickover at once.

XVII

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.

Silence everywhere, complete and strange; except----

Yes--what was that?

She caught her breath and stopped; for as she was crossing the hall, past the pale maid, a slow moaning crept down the stairs like a trickle of blood,--a curious slow moaning, not human at all, more like some poor animal, dying hopelessly by inches in a trap.

Virginia....

Catherine stood struck with horror. That noise? Virginia? Just like an animal?

She looked round at Kate. Their white faces stared at each other. Kate’s lips moved. ‘Since this morning,’ came out of them. ‘Since early this morning. The master----’

She broke off, her pale lips remaining open.

Catherine turned and ran upstairs. She ran as one demented towards the moaning. It must be stopped, it must be stopped. Virginia must be saved, she couldn’t, she mustn’t be allowed to suffer like that, nobody should be allowed to suffer like that, hours and hours....

She ran along the passage to Virginia’s room, the same room where nineteen years ago Virginia herself had been born, but instead of getting nearer the moaning she seemed to be going away from it.

Where was Virginia, then? Where had they put her?

She stood still to listen, and her heart beat so loud that she could hardly hear. There--to the left, where the spare-rooms were. But why? Why had they taken her there?

She ran down the passage to the left. Yes; here it was; behind this shut door....

Catherine’s knees seemed to be going to give way. The sound was terribly close,--so hopeless, so unceasing. What were they doing in there to her child? What was God doing to let them?

Her shaking hand fumbled at the handle. She laid the other over it to steady it. She mustn’t be like this, she knew; she mustn’t go in there only to add to the terror that was there already.

With both hands gripping the handle she slowly turned it and went in.

Stephen.

Stephen half sitting, half lying on the floor up against a sofa. His mother standing looking at him. No one else. The room shrouded in dust-sheets, the bed piled high with spare blankets and pillows. Stephen moaning.

‘Stephen!’ Catherine exclaimed, so much shocked that she could only stare. Stephen--Stephen of all people--in such a state....

His mother turned and came towards her.

‘But--Virginia?’ said Catherine, her lips trembling, for if Stephen could be reduced to this, what dreadful thing was happening to Virginia?

Mrs. Colquhoun took her face in both hands and kissed her,--really kissed her. Her eyes were very bright, with red rims. She had evidently been crying, and she had the look of those who have reached the end of their tether.

‘All is going well I believe now with Virginia,’ she said. ‘I tell him so, and he won’t listen. Do you think you could make him listen? There was a terrible time before the second doctor came and put her under an anæsthetic, and it upset him so that he--well, you see.’

And she made a gesture, half shame, half anger, and wholly unhappy, towards the figure leaning against the sofa.

Then she added, her bright, tear-stained eyes on Catherine’s, ‘To think that my son and God’s priest should go to pieces like this--should be unable in a crisis to do his duty--should lose--should lose----’

She broke off, continuing to stare at Catherine with those bright, incredulous eyes.

Catherine could only gaze at Stephen in dismay. No wonder Kate downstairs hadn’t succeeded in saying what she was trying to say about the master. Stephen, the firm-lipped, the strong denouncer of weakness, the exhorting calm Christian--what a dreadful thing to happen. She didn’t know husbands ever collapsed like that. George hadn’t. He had been anxious and distressed, but he hadn’t moaned. The moaning had been done, she remembered, exclusively by her. George had been her comfort, her rock. What comfort could Virginia have got that day out of Stephen? And it was after all Virginia who was having the baby.

‘Couldn’t the doctors give him something?’ she asked, feeling that poor Stephen ought certainly too to be given a little chloroform to help him through his hours of misery,--anything rather than that he should be left lying there suffering like that.

‘I asked them to give him a soothing draught,’ said Mrs. Colquhoun, ‘and they only told me to take him away. Of course I took him away, for he was killing Virginia, and here I’ve been shut up with him ever since. Catherine----‘it was the first time she had called her that--‘I don’t remember in our day----? I don’t remember that my husband----?’ And she broke off, and stared at her with her bright, exhausted eyes.

‘George didn’t,’ said Catherine hesitatingly, ‘but I think--I think Stephen loves Virginia more than perhaps----’

‘A nice way of loving,’ remarked Mrs. Colquhoun, who had had a terrible day shut up with Stephen, and whose distress for him was by now shot with indignation.

‘Oh, but he can’t help it. Dear Mrs. Colquhoun----’

‘Call me Milly.’

Milly? These barriers tumbling down all round before the blast of a crisis bewildered Catherine. Stephen, who had been so firmly entrenched behind example and precept, lying exposed there, so helplessly and completely exposed that she hardly liked to look at him, hardly liked either him or his mother to know she was there, because of later on when he should be normal again and they both might be humiliated by the recollection, and Mrs. Colquhoun, not only turning on her adored son but flinging away her insincerities and kissing her with almost eager affection and demanding to be called Milly. Strange by-products of Virginia’s suffering, thought Catherine. ‘I must go to her,’ she said, going towards the door.

‘Dear Catherine,’ said Mrs. Colquhoun holding her back, ‘they won’t let you in. It will soon be over now. And what will she say,’ she added, turning to Stephen and raising her voice, ‘what will she say when she asks for her husband and he is incapable of coming to her side?’

But Stephen was far beyond reacting to any twittings.

‘Oh, but he will be--won’t you, Stephen,’ said Catherine. ‘You’re going to be so happy, you and Virginia--so, so happy, and forget all about this----’

And she ran over to him, and stooped down and kissed him.

But Stephen only moaned.

‘He ought to go to bed and have a doctor,’ Catherine said, looking round at Mrs. Colquhoun.

‘<i>He</i> isn’t having the baby,’ was Mrs. Colquhoun’s reply.

‘No--but mental agony is worse than physical,’ said Catherine.

‘Not if it’s babies,’ said Mrs. Colquhoun firmly.

What a strange night that was. What a night of mixed emotions,--great fear, deep pity immense surprise; and what a clearing up in Catherine’s mind of nonsense, of her own private follies. None of the three in that room had yet in their lives been up against this kind of reality, this stark, ruthless reality, before. There were hours and hours to think in, hours and hours to feel in. A few yards away lay Virginia, hanging between life and death. From her room came no moans. An august silence enveloped it, as of issues too great and solemn being settled within for any crying out. It was the slowest, most difficult of births. She herself was far away, profoundly unconcerned, wrapped in the mercifulness of unconsciousness; but how long could even the youngest, strongest body stand this awful strain on it?

The two women away in that spare-room on the other side of the house didn’t dare let themselves even look at this question. It lay cold and heavy on the heart of each, and they turned away their mind’s eyes and busied themselves as best they could,--Catherine with stroking Stephen and murmuring words of comfort in his ear, of which he took no notice, and Mrs. Colquhoun with making tea.

All night long poor Mrs. Colquhoun, herself within an ace of collapse, made fresh tea at short intervals, finding in the rattle of the cups and saucers a way of drowning some at least of her unhappy son’s nerve-racking moans and her own thoughts. She couldn’t and wouldn’t contemplate the possibility of anything happening to Virginia; she insisted to herself that in that quarter all was well. Two doctors and a skilled nurse, two doctors and a skilled nurse, she kept on repeating in her mind, her shaking hands upsetting the cups. A difficult birth, of course, and a long one, but that was nothing unusual with the first child. Nonsense, nonsense, to let even the edge of an imagining of possible disaster slide into one’s mind. One had quite enough to think of without that, with Stephen lying there disgracing himself and her, denying in effect his God, and certainly abandoning his manhood,--for Virginia’s screams before the anæsthetist arrived, those awful, awful screams coming from his gentle wife, had sent the unhappy Stephen, after two hours of having to listen to them, out of his mind. He had killed her, he was her murderer, he had killed her, killed her with his love....

‘Nonsense,’ his mother had said in her most matter-of-fact way, on his shouting out things like this for every one to hear,--really excessively shocking things when one remembered all the young maids in the house; and then with trembling hands she had led him into this distant room, and he had thrown himself down where he had ever since been lying, and had said no word more, but only ceaselessly moaned.

And Mrs. Colquhoun, who had never in her life overwhelmingly loved, and never till that day known she possessed any nerves, looked on at first helplessly, and then indignantly, and the whole time uncomprehendingly. It was all very well, and of course a husband was anxious on such occasions, and should and was expected to show feeling, but within decent limits. These limits were not decent. Anything but. What would the parish say if it saw him? What did the servants say, who could hear him?

She put aspirin into his heedless mouth, and asked him severely if he had forgotten God. She tried to twit him into manliness and priestliness. She actually shook him once, believing that counter-shocks were good for the nerves. Useless, all useless; and by the time Catherine arrived she herself was very nearly done for.