Chapter IV: Part I: I (4)

She now lived alone in her son’s abandoned rectory, and daily walked across the park to inquire how Virginia did. She was immensely surprised to see Catherine, who had not before arrived uninvited and unprepared for, but welcomed her nevertheless, for she too had a high opinion of her.

Nobody could have given less trouble than Mrs. Cumfrit, or been more sensible in the matter of the marriage. Also, not a breath of gossip or criticism had blown upon her during the whole long time between her husband’s death and her daughter’s marriage, when it well might have if she had been of a less complete propriety and quietness of behaviour. For, after all, she had only been in the early thirties when poor Mr. Cumfrit--a heart of gold, that man, but self-made, and not educated at either Oxford or Cambridge, nor even at a public school, which had been such a pity for Stephen, who otherwise might have found him more interesting to talk to--died, and being quite a pretty little thing, with something really very taking in the way she spoke and looked up at one, it wouldn’t have been surprising if her name had been coupled from time to time with that of some man. It never had been. If there were suitors, the Rectory never heard of them. People came and stayed at the Manor, but they were all relations--either rather odd ones of poor Mr. Cumfrit’s, or much more desirable ones of Mrs. Cumfrit’s, whose mother had been a daughter of the first Lord Bognor. A quiet, decent, well-bred woman was Mrs. Cumfrit, content to devote herself to her home, her child, and the doing of kind acts in the parish; an excellent mother-in-law, tactful and unobtrusive; a good neighbour, a firm friend. The only thing about her which Mrs. Colquhoun could have wished, perhaps, different, was her personal appearance: she still looked younger than the mother of a married daughter should,--though to do her justice it was in no way, apparently, because she tried to. Well, no doubt later on, when all the expensive clothes surviving from her extravagant days had had time to wear out, and she dressed more ordinarily, in sensible things like plain serges and tweeds, this would be remedied, and of course each year now would make a great difference. For Stephen’s sake she ought to look older. People had smiled, Mrs. Colquhoun knew, at her being his mother-in-law. This seemed to his mother a pity. She was a little sensitive about it; the more so that there had been a time when she had secretly hoped Stephen would marry Mrs. Cumfrit--before, of course, his own splendid plan had dawned on her, and Virginia was still in socks. But Stephen, wise boy, knew what he was about, and waited patiently for little Virginia, of whom he had always been so fond.

The two mothers-in-law met with propriety. They kissed, and expressed pleasure.

‘This is surely a surprise,’ said Mrs. Colquhoun, looking at Virginia but with a smile of welcome for Catherine on her face. She was very like her son--tall and thin, and of an avian profile. She towered above the small, round Catherine.

‘Yes,’ said Virginia, putting her papers neatly together; Stephen did so much dislike disorder, and two mothers at once might presently create it.

‘What brought you down on a Sunday, dear Mrs. Cumfrit?’ asked Mrs. Colquhoun, sitting on the end of the sofa, and patting Virginia’s feet, reassuringly to show they were not in her way, and approvingly because they were, as she daily told her daughter-in-law they should be, up.

Catherine wanted to say ‘A train,’ but discarded this as childish. In her conversations with Mrs. Colquhoun she was constantly being impelled towards the simple truth, and constantly discarding it as unsuitable.

She really didn’t know what to give as a reason. She looked at her fellow-mother-in-law helplessly.

Mrs. Colquhoun was struck by an air of dilapidation about her. ‘Ageing,’ she commented to herself.

‘I had a longing to see Virginia,’ said Catherine at last; and it seemed a lame sort of reason, in spite of its being true.

Mrs. Colquhoun privately hoped this mightn’t be the first of a series of such longings, for it was in her opinion essential that a young couple should be left undisturbed by relations, and especially should they not be allowed to get a feeling that at any moment they might unexpectedly be descended upon. It made them jumpy; and what could be worse for a young married woman than to be made jumpy? For three months Virginia’s mother had left her most properly alone, only coming down occasionally for a night, and never without being asked. Was she now going to inaugurate an era of surprise visits? Stephen wouldn’t like it at all, and Mrs. Colquhoun couldn’t help feeling, even as Virginia had felt, a little uneasy. If she had seen the luggage she would have felt still more so, for it was not, as Virginia had already noticed, the luggage of a mere week-end.

‘How natural,’ said Mrs. Colquhoun. ‘And dear Virginia will, I am sure, have been delighted.’

‘Yes,’ said Virginia, removing her pile of papers out of reach of the jam to which her mother seemed to be helping herself a little carelessly; Stephen did so much dislike stickiness.

‘But I hope you weren’t worried about her,’ Mrs. Colquhoun continued. ‘She is in very good hands here, you know, and you may be sure that when her husband is away I look after her--don’t I, Virginia.’

‘Yes,’ said Virginia, anxiously watching her mother, who seemed about to put her cup down on the top of the pile of papers. She got up, and quietly drew the table away into safety; Stephen did so much dislike smudges.

‘Indeed I know that,’ said Catherine politely.

She and Mrs. Colquhoun had always been politeness itself to each other. She tried to smile as she spoke. She ought to smile. She always did smile when addressing Mrs. Colquhoun. And she couldn’t. An awful vision of what Mrs. Colquhoun’s face would change into if she could have seen her the night before froze her mouth stiff.

‘She looks ill,’ thought Mrs. Colquhoun; and fervently hoped she wasn’t going to be ill there.

Virginia offered them bread and butter. Mrs. Colquhoun would not eat; she would just have a cup of tea, and be off again. Virginia mustn’t think she came there only for what she could get.

Virginia smiled, for this was one of her mother-in-law’s little jokes; but she was of so grave a type of countenance that even when she smiled she somehow managed still to look serious. She had strongly marked dark eyebrows, and her hair was drawn off her forehead and neatly brushed back from her ears. She looked very young--rather like a schoolgirl in her last term, dressed with the plainness Stephen and her own taste preferred. She was not pretty, she was merely young; but what grace, what charm there was in that!

Her mother-in-law watched her presiding over the massive silver tea service--George had wished Catherine’s tea service to be handsome--with proud and affectionate possessiveness. Virginia called both the mothers-in-law mother--what else was she to call them? Impossible to address Mrs. Colquhoun by a hybrid like mamma or, even more impossible and grotesque, mummy--and it led to confusion. For, unless their eyes were fixed on her face, they couldn’t know which of them she was talking to. Conversation was constantly being tripped up and delayed by this when the three were together, and Virginia, who was anxious to be a good hostess, besides dutifully loving them both, sometimes found this a strain, and wished she could deal with them separately. Not that, owing to the rareness and shortness of her mother’s visits, it had often happened that she had had them at the same time, for on those occasions her mother-in-law, apprised of the arrival, refrained, as she put it, from intruding. This had been easy when a visit only lasted from Saturday to Monday; but if the present one were going to last longer--and what about all that luggage?--it was not to be expected nor wished that Stephen’s mother shouldn’t come round as usual.

What she and Stephen’s mother wanted most to know at that moment was how long Virginia’s mother meant to stay. But no one can ever ask what most they want to know. What one most wants to know does invariably seem outside the proprieties, thought Virginia, slightly frowning at life’s social complications as she ate her bread and butter, thankful that she and Stephen lived in the country where there were fewer of them.

And Catherine, lying back in her chair--Mrs. Colquhoun never lay back in her chair unless she was definitely unwell and in a dressing-gown--didn’t in any way help. She said nothing whatever about her intentions, and hardly anything about anything else; she merely sat there and looked dilapidated. Evidently, thought Mrs. Colquhoun, observing her, she was worn out. But why? One journey by train from London to Chickover, even by a slow Sunday train, oughtn’t to make a normal woman look yellow. Mrs. Cumfrit looked excessively yellow. Why?

‘Do have some of this cake, mother,’ said Virginia; and as Catherine’s gaze was fixed on the open window and Mrs. Colquhoun’s was fixed on Catherine, they both together said they wouldn’t, thank you; and then, as usual when this happened, there was a brief upheaval of explanations.

‘And how is the excellent Mrs. Mitcham?’ inquired Mrs. Colquhoun, pleasantly. ‘How does she like her transplantation from a quiet country parish to London? Does she take root in Mayfair?’

Catherine said she was as kind as ever, and made her most comfortable.

‘We were sure she would, weren’t we, Virginia. Dear Mrs. Cumfrit, I do so like to know that you are in clover with that devoted creature to look after you. And so does Virginia--don’t you, Virginia.’

Virginia said she did, and Catherine said she was.

‘But how does the good soul like it when you leave her alone and come away?’ inquired Mrs. Colquhoun. ‘Oh well, of course you never do leave her for long, do you. A day or two--at the outside a day or two, or really one can imagine her beginning to fret, she is so devoted to you.’

‘Stephen might have stayed in the flat,’ said Virginia, ‘as you’re not in it this week-end, mother. Poor Stephen--he does get so very tired of hotels. I wish we had known.’

‘Oh----’ exclaimed Catherine, startled at the picture her imagination instantly presented of Stephen loose in her bedroom--there were only two bedrooms in the flat, hers and Mrs. Mitcham’s--sleeping in her bed, ranging at will among her excessively pretty odds and ends, among all those little charming things that collect on the dressing-table of a wealthy man’s adored wife, and naturally don’t wear out as fast as he does. But she pulled herself up, and after a tiny pause deftly ended what had so unpropitiously begun with, ‘What a pity.’

‘Perhaps it might be arranged another time,’ suggested Mrs. Colquhoun, hoping that Catherine would on this let them know whether the next Sunday was to find her still at poor little Virginia’s. Surely not; surely, surely she couldn’t suddenly have become, after so much tactfulness, entirely without any?

But Catherine only said in her small voice, as politely as ever, ‘Indeed it might,’--and wondered to herself how many more Sundays there were in Lent. Not many, she thought; Easter must be quite close now; Stephen had been in London for what seemed to her innumerable week-ends, and Lent, she knew, only contained six of them. Yet even if there were only one more, the picture of Stephen in her bed....

Mrs. Colquhoun now saw that only a direct question would extract from Catherine what she wanted to know, and getting up with her customary briskness--she was well on the way to seventy, but yet was brisk--remarked that she really must be going; and having bent over Virginia and kissed her--‘No, no, don’t dream of moving, my dear child,’ she said--she approached Catherine, who had got out of her chair, and held out her hand.

‘Shall I see you again, dear Mrs. Cumfrit?’ she asked.

And Catherine, instead of, as Mrs. Colquhoun had trusted she would, saying, ‘I’m afraid not--I go home to-morrow early,’ only said warmly, ‘Indeed I hope so.’

Which left Mrs. Colquhoun where it found her.

XII

Mr. Lambton came to supper. He was the curate; and, during these Lenten Sundays of Stephen’s absence, after evening service supped at the Manor.

Mrs. Colquhoun, it transpired, supped on these occasions too, otherwise, Virginia pointed out, Mr. Lambton couldn’t have supped, it needing two women to make one man proper. She didn’t put it quite like this, but that is how it arrived in Catherine’s mind. On this evening Mrs. Colquhoun didn’t sup because Catherine’s presence made hers unnecessary; and by absenting herself when she needn’t have, and thus leaving Catherine to enjoy her daughter’s society untrammelled, gave her colleague in the office of mother-in-law a lesson in tact which she hoped, as she ate her solitary meal at home and didn’t like it, for she hadn’t been expected back to supper and there was nothing really worth eating, would not be lost.

Mr. Lambton was young, and kind, and full of reverences. He reverenced his Rector and his Rector’s wife and his Rector’s mother and his Rector’s mother-in-law; he was ready to reverence their man-servants and their maid-servants and anything that was theirs as well. He was not long from Cambridge, and this was his first curacy.

On the quiet surface of the evening he hardly caused an extra ripple. He was attentive to both ladies, offering them beet-root salad and bringing them footstools, and afterwards in the drawing-room he brought them more footstools. Catherine kept on forgetting he was there; and Mr. Lambton, having established his Rector’s wife’s mother in an easy-chair out of a draught, and inquired if she didn’t wish for a shawl--having discharged, in fact, his duty to the waning generation, forgot in his turn that she was there, and with Virginia discussed the proposed improvements, going with a quiet relish through all the papers Catherine had been taken through that afternoon.

Catherine sat in her chair and dozed. She felt just as old as they made her. With drowsy wonder she remembered this time yesterday, and the afternoon at Hampton Court, when she had raced--yes, actually raced--about the gardens, propelled by Christopher’s firm hand on her elbow and keeping up with his great strides, laughing, talking, the blood quick in her veins, the scent of spring in her nostrils, the gay adoring words of that strange young man in her ears. Mr. Lambton must be about Christopher’s age, she thought. Yet to Mr. Lambton she was merely some one, perhaps more accurately something, to be placed carefully in a chair out of a draught and then left. Which of them was right? It was most unsettling. Was she the same person to-night as last night? Was she two persons? If she was only one, which one? Or was she a mere vessel of receptiveness, a transparent vessel into which other people poured their view of her, and she instantly reflected the exact colour of their opinion?

Catherine didn’t like this idea of herself--it seemed to make her somehow get lost, and she shifted uneasily in her chair. But she didn’t like anything about herself these days; she was horribly surprised, and shocked, and confused. After all, one couldn’t get away from the fact that one was well on in the forties, and supposing that there were people in the world who did seem able to fall in love with one even then--silly people, of course; silly, violent people--surely one felt nothing oneself but a bland and creditable indifference? On the other hand she didn’t believe she was nearly old enough to be planted among cushions out of a draught and left. It was very puzzling, and tiresome too. Here she felt almost rheumatic with age. Last night----

The mere thought of last night woke her up so completely and made her so angry that she gave the footstool an impatient push with her foot, and it skidded away along the polished oak floor.

Mr. Lambton looked up from the papers he and Virginia were poring over, and mildly contemplated the figure by the fire a moment, collecting his thoughts. Something rather vigorous seemed just to have been done. There had been a noise, and the footstool was certainly a good way off.

He got up, and went across and replaced it under Catherine’s feet. ‘You’re sure you’re quite comfortable, Mrs. Cumfrit?’ he asked, in much the same voice with which, when district visiting, he addressed the aged poor--a hearty, an encouraging, a rather loud voice. ‘You wouldn’t like another cushion, would you?’

Catherine thanked him, and just to please him and make him feel he was pleasing her, said she thought another cushion would be very nice indeed, and let him adjust it with care in what he described, evidently from his knowledge of where his older parishioners chiefly ached, the small of her back.

The small of her back. She wanted to laugh. All these elderly places she seemed to have about her--feet needing supporting on footstools, shoulders needing sheltering in shawls, backs needing propping with cushions.... But she didn’t laugh; she sat quiet, having nicely thanked Mr. Lambton, and on the whole did feel very comfortable like that, cushioned and foot-stooled, and no demands of any sort being made on her. It anyhow was peace.

Down here she was still simply somebody’s mother, and it was a restful state. Except for the last three months she had continually in her life only been somebody’s something. She had begun by being somebody’s daughter--such a good little girl; she clearly remembered being a good little girl who gave no trouble, and played happily for hours together by herself. Then she passed straight from that to being somebody’s wife; again a great success, again doing everything that was expected of her and nothing that wasn’t. Then, when this phase was over, for twelve years she became exclusively somebody’s mother; but how had she not, when that too ended, stretched out her arms to the sun and cried out all to herself, ‘Now I’m going to be me!’

Three months she had had of it, three months of freedom in London; and friends had seemed to spring up like daisies under her feet, and Mrs. Mitcham was always making tea, and cigarette ends were always being emptied out of ash-trays, and some cousins she had in London, who had cropped up the minute she had got there, brought friends, and these friends instantly became her friends, and it was a holiday, the three months, a very happy little holiday as different as possible from anything she had ever known, in which every one she met was kind and gay, and nobody in any way restricted her movements, and when she wanted to be alone and go for her solitary enjoyments, such as music, which she best loved alone, or visits to Kew to see whether spring wasn’t anywhere about yet, she could be alone and go, and when she wanted to see people and talk, she could see them and talk, and there was no clash anywhere of some one else’s opposing tastes and wishes.

A pleasant life. An amusing, independent, dignified small life; opening out before her with that other life of faithfully fulfilled duties and expectations at the back of her like a pillow to rest her conscience on. She hadn’t had time to arrange anything yet, but she certainly meant to do good as well as be happy, to find some form of charitable activity and throw herself into it. She wasn’t going to be idle, to drift into being one of those numerous ex-wives and mothers, unhappy specialists out of a job, who roam through their remaining years unprofitably conversing.

All this had seemed to open out before her like a bland afternoon landscape, and what had she done? Behaved so idiotically that she had been forced to run away; and not only run, but not know in the least when she would be able to go back again.

It was most unfortunate that she should have chanced to meet and make friends with the one young man in, she supposed, ten millions, who could be mad enough to fall in love with her and was of an undisciplined disposition into the bargain. Why, he might have been a quite meek young man--one of those who worship in secret, reverence from afar, one controlled by a lifted finger or a flickered eyelash. But nothing controlled Christopher. He was an elemental force, and he swept her with him--she had certainly been swept somewhere unusual that brief moment she became so strangely quiescent in his arms. In his arms! Disgraceful. It rankled. It gnawed. The only thing to do, with such a memory scorching one, was to take to one’s heels. But imagine at her age having to take to any such things. The <i>indignity</i>....

Once more the footstool skidded across the shiny floor.

The heads bent over the table turned towards her inquiringly.

‘Have you the fidgets, mother?’ asked Virginia gravely.

‘I think I’ll go to bed,’ said Catherine, getting up from her cushions.

Mr. Lambton hastened across to help. An odd desire to slap Mr. Lambton seized her. She blushed that she should wish to.

‘But not before prayers?’ said Virginia, surprised.

‘Oh yes--I forgot prayers,’ said Catherine, slightly ashamed.

Virginia, though, was more ashamed. It did seem to her unfortunate that her mother should have said that before Mr. Lambton. Bad to forget them, but worse to say so.

She got up and rang the bell.

‘We’ll have them now, as you’re tired,’ she said.

There usedn’t to be prayers in Catherine’s day, because George in his day hadn’t liked them, and she had kept things up exactly as he had, so that it was natural she should forget the new habits, besides finding it difficult to remember that the Manor was really a rectory now, a place in which family prayers the last thing at night and the first thing in the morning were inevitable.

In came the servants, headed by the parlourmaid bearing a tray of lemonade and soda water, and it seemed to Catherine, watching for the faces of old friends, that they had been much thinned out. They trickled in where, in old days, if there had been prayers, they would have poured. Manifestly they were being rapidly exchanged for cottages. There was hardly one left to smile furtively at her before settling down with folded hands and composed vacant face to listen to Mr. Lambton.

He officiated in Stephen’s absence. He did it in a clear tenor. The room growled with muffled responses. Virginia’s voice firmly led the growls. They all knelt with their faces to the walls and the soles of their shoes towards Mr. Lambton. Catherine became very conscious of her shoes, aware that their high heels were not the heels of the absolutely pure in heart. Before her mind floated a picture she had once seen of a pair of German boots that had belonged to a German woman who had been wicked, but, by the time she wore the boots, was good. They were the very opposite of the shoes she herself had on at the moment, and below the picture of them was written:

O wie lieblich sind die Schuhe
Demuthsvolle Seelensruhe....

She wondered what Mr. Lambton would think of them as outward signs of inward grace, and, if he thought highly, what would he think of hers? Ashamed, she collected her wandering thoughts; for the words Mr. Lambton was repeating were so beautiful that they sanctified everything--himself, herself, the assembled upturned shoe-soles. She suddenly felt very small and silly, as though she were one of the commoner insects, hopping irreverently at the feet of some great calm angel. She laid her cheek on her folded arms and listened attentively to the lovely words Mr. Lambton was praying--<i>Lighten our darkness, we beseech Thee</i>.... How often she had heard them; how seldom she had noticed them. They were more beautiful than music; they were nobler....

Virginia saw--it was her business to see how the servants behaved, and her glance naturally took in Catherine too--her mother’s attitude, and hoped that Mr. Lambton didn’t. The only decent way of praying in a drawing-room was to kneel up straight, hands folded and eyes either shut or looking at the seat of one’s chair. Her mother was crouching, almost sitting, on the floor, her arms resting on her chair, her head laid sideways on her arms. Mothers oughtn’t to do that. A child who was very tired might, but it would certainly be reproved afterwards. Fortunately the servants couldn’t see because of their backs, but Mr. Lambton, if he raised his eyes, wouldn’t be able not to. She hoped he wouldn’t raise his eyes. How very keenly one felt everything one’s mother did or didn’t do. Strange how sensitive one became about her when one was grown up, and how, in some uncomfortable way, responsible.

Prayers were over in ten minutes, the servants filed out, Mr. Lambton, having drunk some soda water and said what was proper about his evening, went away, and Virginia, reluctant to go upstairs to her frigid solitude, came and stood by the fire warming her hands so as to put off the melancholy moment a little longer, and talked of Stephen.

‘I do so miss him these week-ends,’ she said, strangling a sigh.

Catherine sympathetically stroked her arm.

‘I can so well understand how much one would miss some one one loved as you love Stephen,’ she said.

(‘Mother,’ thought Virginia, ‘is really very nice, in spite of her queer ways.’)

‘You’ve no idea,’ she said aloud, her eyes bright with pride, ‘how wonderful he is.’

(‘Who,’ thought Catherine, ‘could have imagined it. That solemn old Stephen.’)

‘I’m so glad,’ she said aloud, putting her arm round Virginia. ‘You know I used to be afraid--I wasn’t quite sure--whether perhaps the difference in age----’

‘Age!’

Virginia looked down at her mother pityingly. ‘I wish you understood, mother,’ she said gravely, ‘how little age has to do with it so long as people love each other. Why, what can it matter? We never think of it. It simply doesn’t come in. Stephen is Stephen, whatever his age may be. He never, never could be anything else.’

‘No,’ agreed Catherine rather wistfully, for if Stephen could only be something else she might find him easier to talk to.

However, that was neither here nor there. He wasn’t Virginia’s husband in order to talk agreeably to her mother. The great thing was that he succeeded in bringing complete bliss to his wife. How right the child had been to insist on marrying him; how unerring was her instinct. What had she cared for the reasoning of relations, the advice so copiously given not only by Catherine herself, but by various uncles and cousins, both on her father’s and mother’s side? And as for the suggestion that she would look ridiculous going about with a husband old enough to be her father, she had merely smiled gravely at that and not even condescended to answer.

‘I wonder,’ said Catherine, pensively gazing into the fire, her cheek against Virginia’s sleeve, ‘how much happiness has been prevented by fear.’

‘What fear?’

‘Of people--and especially relations. Their opinion.’

‘I am sure,’ said Virginia, blushing a little, for she wasn’t used to talking about these things to anybody but Stephen, ‘that one should give up everything to follow love.’

‘But what love?’

Virginia blushed again. ‘Oh, mother--of course only the right love.’

‘You mean husbands?’

‘Well, of course, mother.’

Virginia blushed a third time. What could her mother imagine she was thinking of?

She went on with grave shyness: ‘Love--the right love--shouldn’t mind anything any one in the world says.’

‘I suppose it shouldn’t,’ said Catherine. ‘And yet----’

‘There isn’t any “and yet” in love, mother. Not in real love.’

‘You mean husbands,’ said Catherine again.

‘Well, of course, mother,’ said Virginia, impatiently this time.

‘I suppose there isn’t,’ said Catherine pensively. ‘But still----’

‘There isn’t any “but still” either.’

Before this splendid inexperience, this magnificent unawareness, Catherine could only be mute; and presently she held up her face to be kissed, and murmured that she thought she would now go to bed.

Virginia fidgeted. She didn’t seem to want to leave the fire. She raked out the ashes for quite a long time, and then pushed the chairs back into their proper places and shook up the cushions.

‘I hate going to bed,’ she said suddenly.

Catherine, who had been watching her sleepily, was surprised awake again--Virginia had sounded so natural.

‘Do you, darling?’ she asked. ‘Why?’

Virginia looked at her mother a moment, and then fetched the bedroom candles from the table they had been put ready on, the electric light being now cut off by Stephen’s wish at half-past ten each night.

She gave Catherine her candle. ‘Didn’t you----’ she began.

‘Didn’t I what?’

‘Hate going to bed when my father was away?’

‘Oh. I see. No, I didn’t. I--I liked being alone.’

They stood looking at each other, their candles lighting up their faces. Catherine’s face was surprised; Virginia’s immensely earnest.

‘I think that’s very strange, mother,’ she said; and added after a silence, ‘You do understand, don’t you, that in all I’ve been saying about--about love, I only’--she blushed for the fourth time--‘mean <i>proper</i> love.’

‘Oh, quite, darling,’ Catherine hastened to assure her. ‘Husbands.’

And Catherine, not used to bedroom candles, held hers crooked and dropped some grease on the carpet, and Virginia had the utmost difficulty in strangling an exclamation. Stephen did so much dislike grease on the carpets.

XIII

Stephen came back by the first train next morning, suppressing his excitement as he got out of the car and on the doorstep saw Virginia, standing there as usual, in her simple morning frock and fresh neatness, waiting to welcome him home. Outwardly he looked just a sober, middle-aged cleric, giving his wife a perfunctory kiss while the servants brought in his things; inwardly he was thirty at the sight of her, and twenty at the touch of her. She, suppressing in her turn all signs of joy, received his greeting with a grave smile, and they both at once went into his study, and shutting the door fell into each other’s arms.

‘My wife,’ whispered Stephen.

‘My husband,’ whispered Virginia.

It was their invariable greeting at this blissful Monday morning moment of reunion. No one would have recognised Stephen who saw him alone with Virginia; no one would have recognised Virginia who saw her alone with Stephen. Such are the transformations of love. Catherine kept out of the way; she went tactfully for a walk. They were to themselves till lunch-time, and could pour out everything each had been thinking and feeling and saying and doing since they parted such ages ago, on Saturday.

Unfortunately this time Virginia had something to pour out which wasn’t going to give Stephen pleasure. She put it off as long as she could, but he, made quick by love, soon felt there was something in the background of her talk, and drawing his finger gently over her forehead, which usually was serene with purest joy, said, ‘A little pucker. I see the tiniest pucker. What is it, Virginia love?’

‘Mother,’ said Virginia.

‘Mother? My mother?’

Stephen couldn’t believe it. His mother causing puckers?

‘No. Mine. She’s come.’

‘Come here?’

Stephen was much surprised. And on Saturday night not a word, not an indication of this intention.

‘Had you asked her?’ he inquired.

‘Oh, Stephen--as though I would without your consent!’

‘No. Of course not, darling. But when----?’

‘Yesterday.’

‘On a Sunday?’

‘Yes. And I’m afraid--oh, Stephen, I do think she doesn’t mean to go away very soon, because she has brought two trunks.’

Stephen was much moved by this news. He looked at his wife in real dismay. He considered he was still in his honeymoon. What were three months? Nothing. To people who loved as he and Virginia loved they were absolutely nothing, and to have a parent come and interrupt, and especially a parent to whom the whole place had so recently belonged.... Unfortunate; unfortunate; unfortunate to the last degree.

‘How very odd,’ said Stephen, who till now had regarded his mother-in-law as a monument of tact; adding, after a pause, ‘Two trunks, did you say? You counted them, I suppose. Two trunks. That is certainly a large number. And your mother said nothing at all of this when I dined with her on Saturday----’

‘I do hope, darling,’ interrupted Virginia anxiously, ‘that you had enough to eat?’

‘Plenty, plenty,’ said Stephen, waving the recollection of the scrambled eggs aside. ‘She said no word at all, Virginia. On the contrary, she assured me she was coming to St. Clement’s to hear me preach last night.’

‘Oh, Stephen--I simply can’t understand how she could bear to miss that!’

‘Have you any idea, my love, what made her come down unannounced?’ asked Stephen, the joy of his homecoming completely clouded over.

‘No, darling. I can’t make it out. It really puzzles me.’

‘You have no theory at all?’

‘None.’

‘Nor any idea as to the length of her proposed stay?’

‘Only the idea of the two trunks. Mother hasn’t said a word, and I can’t very well ask.’

‘No,’ said Stephen thoughtfully. ‘No.’ And added, ‘It is very disquieting.’

It was; for he saw clearly what an awkward situation must arise with the abdicated monarch alongside of the reigning one for any time longer than a day or two, and also, since nothing particular appeared to have brought her down, she must have come idly, on an impulse, because she had nothing else to do,--and to be idle, to drift round, seemed to him really a great pity for any human being. It led inevitably to mischief. Fruitful activity was of the first importance for every one, he couldn’t but think, especially for one’s wife’s mother. But it must take place somewhere else. That was essential: it must take place somewhere else.

‘Well, perhaps,’ he said, stroking Virginia’s hair, endeavouring to give and get comfort, ‘in spite of the trunks it will only be for a day or two. Ladies do take large amounts of luggage about with them.’

Virginia shook her head. ‘Mother doesn’t,’ she said. ‘Each time before she only brought a bag.’

They were silent. He left off stroking her hair.

Then Stephen pulled himself together. ‘Well, well,’ he said. ‘Come, come. Whatever it is that happens to us, Virginia love, we must do our best to bear it, mustn’t we.’

‘Oh, of <i>course</i>, Stephen darling,’ said Virginia. ‘You know I’ll do whatever you do.’

She laid her head on his breast, and they gave themselves up to those happy lawful caresses that are at once the joy and the duty of the married. Exquisite arrangement, Stephen considered, who had been starved of caresses till middle age, and now, let lawfully loose among them, found them more delightful than in his most repented-of dreams he had dared imagine--exquisite arrangement, by which the more you love the greater is your virtue.

‘After all, my darling,’ he whispered, ‘we have got each other.’

‘Indeed and indeed we have,’ whispered Virginia, clinging to him.

‘My own dear wife,’ murmured Stephen, holding her close.

‘My own darling husband,’ murmured Virginia, blissfully nestling.

Catherine, meanwhile, was hurrying back across muddy fields and many stiles so as not to be late for lunch. Anxious to leave her children--was not Stephen by law now also her child? fantastic thought--to themselves as long as possible, she had rather overdone it, and walked farther than there was time for, so that at the end her walk had almost to become a run. Stephen, she felt sure, was a punctual man. Besides, nobody likes being kept waiting for meals. She hoped they wouldn’t wait. She hurried and got hot. Her shoes were caked in mud, and her hair, for the March wind was blowing, wasn’t neat. She hoped to slip in unseen and arrange herself decently before facing Stephen, but when she arrived within sight of the house they both, having been standing at the window ever since the gong went, came out to meet her.

‘Oh, you shouldn’t have!’ she cried, as soon as they were near enough to hear. ‘You shouldn’t have waited. I’m dreadfully sorry. Am I very late?’

‘Only a quarter of an hour,’ said Stephen courteously--how wonderful he was, thought Virginia. ‘Nothing at all to worry about. How do you do. This is an unexpected pleasure.’

‘I hope you don’t mind?’ said Catherine, smiling up at him as they shook hands. ‘I’ve been impulsive. I came down on a sudden wave of longing to be with Virginia. You’ll have to teach me self-control, Stephen.’

‘We all need that,’ said Stephen.

He hid his feelings; he contrived to smile; he was wonderful, thought Virginia.

‘And on my very first day I’m late for lunch,’ said Catherine. ‘I wish you hadn’t waited.’

The expression ‘my very first day’ seemed to Stephen and Virginia ominous; nobody spoke of a first day unless there was to be a second, a third, a fourth, a whole row of days. There was, therefore, a small pause. Then Stephen said, as politely as if he were a man who wasn’t hungry and had not had breakfast ever so much earlier than usual, ‘Not at all’--and Catherine felt, as she had so often felt before, that he was a little difficult to talk to, and Virginia, who knew how particularly he disliked being kept waiting for meals, even when he wasn’t hungry, loved him more than ever.

Indeed, his manner to her mother was perfect, she thought,--so patient, so--the absurd word did describe it--gentlemanly. And he remained patient and gentlemanly even when Catherine, in her desire to be quick, only gave her muddy shoes the briefest rubbing on the mat, so that she made footmarks on the hall carpet, and Stephen, who was a clean man and didn’t like footmarks on his carpets, merely said, ‘Kate will bring a brush.’

Lunch went off very well considering, Virginia thought. It was thanks to Stephen, of course. He was adorable. He told her mother the news of the parish, not forgetting anything he thought might interest her about the people she had known, such as young Andrews breaking his leg at football, and foolish Daisy Logan leaving her good situation to marry a cowman and begin her troubles before she need; and afterwards in the drawing-room, where they had coffee--when she and Stephen were alone they had it cosily in the study, the darling study, scene of so many happy private hours--he sent Kate to fetch the plans and estimates, and went through them with her mother so patiently and carefully, explaining them infinitely better and more clearly than she had been able to do the day before, and always in such admirable brief sentences, using five words where she, with her untrained mind, had used fifty, and making her mother feel that they liked her to know what they were doing, and wanted her to share their interests. Her mother was not to feel out in the cold. Dear Stephen. Virginia glowed with love of him. Who but Stephen could, in the moment of his own disappointment, think and act with such absolute sweetness?

Time flew. It was her hour for putting up her feet, but she couldn’t tear herself away from Stephen and the plans. She sat watching his fine face--how she loved his thinness, his clean-cut, definite features--bent over the table, while with his finger he traced the lines her mother was having explained to her. Her mother looked sleepy. Virginia thought this queer so early in the day. She had been sleepy the evening before, but that was natural after the journey and getting up so early. Perhaps she had walked too far, and tired herself. After all, she wasn’t any longer young.

‘You see how simply it can be worked,’ said Stephen. ‘You merely turn this tap--<i>a</i>--and the water flows through <i>b</i> and <i>c</i>, along <i>d</i>, and round the curve to <i>f</i>, washing out, on its way, the whole of <i>e</i>.’

Her mother murmured something--Virginia thought she said, ‘I’d like to be <i>e</i>’--and if this was really what she did say, it was evident that she not only looked sleepy, but was very nearly actually asleep. In which case Stephen’s pains were all being wasted, and he might just as well leave off.

‘Not only,’ said Stephen, ‘is this the simplest device of any that have been submitted, and as far as one can humanly tell absolutely foolproof, but, as is so often the case with the best, it is also the cheapest.’

There was a long pause. Her mother said nothing. Virginia looked at her, and it did seem as if she really had gone to sleep.

‘Mother,’ said Virginia gently. She couldn’t bear that Stephen should be taking all this trouble to interest and inform somebody who wasn’t awake.

Her mother started and gave herself a little shake and said rather hastily, ‘I see.’ And then, to save what she felt was a delicate situation and divert Stephen’s attention from herself--he was looking at her thoughtfully over the top of his glasses--she pointed to a specially involuted part of the plan, where pipes seemed twisted in a frenzy, and asked what happened there, at that knot, at--she bent closer--yes, at <i>k</i>.

Stephen, simple-minded man, at once with the utmost courtesy and clearness told her, and before he was half-way through his explanation Virginia noticed--it was really very queer--her mother’s eyelids shutting again.

This time she got up a little brusquely; she couldn’t let Stephen’s kindness and time be wasted in such a manner. ‘It’s my hour for resting,’ she said, standing gravely at the table, one hand, a red young hand with a slender wedding ring, resting on her husband’s shoulder. ‘I suppose I ought to go and lie down.’

Her mother at that moment came to life again. ‘Shall I come and tuck you up?’ she asked, making a movement as if she were going to accompany her.

‘Sweet of you, mother--but if Stephen doesn’t mind, I thought I’d rest on the couch in his study to-day. It’s so comfortable.’

‘Certainly,’ said Stephen.

He refrained from calling her his love; he and she both refrained from any endearments in public,--on principle, as unseemly in a clergyman’s family, and also because they feared that if once they began they mightn’t be able to stop, so excessive was their mutual delight, at this early stage, in lovemaking, and so new were they both at the delicious game. And, besides this, they were shy, and unable either of them in their hearts to get away from a queer feeling of guilt, in spite of the Law and the Church both having shed their awful smiles and blessings on whatever they might choose to do.

‘Oh, I won’t profane Stephen’s study,’ said her mother, smiling at him. ‘I’ll only just come and tuck you up and then leave you to sleep. Thank you so much, Stephen,’ she added, turning to him; ‘it has been so good of you. I think your ideas are marvellous.’

But how many of them had her mother heard, Virginia wondered as, after a pressure of her husband’s shoulder which meant, ‘Be quick and come to the study and we can be by ourselves till tea,’ and a brief answering touch of her hand by his which meant that he’d follow her in five minutes, she and Catherine walked together down the long, beautiful old room, while Stephen laid his papers carefully in the wicker tray kept for the purpose. Very few, surely. Yet her mother spoke enthusiastically. It did slightly shake one’s belief in a mother who obviously slept most of the time ideas were being expounded to her, that she should, with that easy worldly over-emphasis Virginia hadn’t heard now for three months, that pleasant simulation of an enthusiasm which Virginia had always, ever since she began really to think, suspected couldn’t be quite real, declare them marvellous, on waking up.

‘I mustn’t be unfair, though,’ thought Virginia as they went into the study arm in arm--it was Catherine who had put her arm through Virginia’s. ‘After all, I explained things yesterday, so mother did know something of our ideas, even if she didn’t listen to-day. But <i>why</i> should she be so tired?’

‘Didn’t you sleep well last night, mother?’ she asked, as Catherine arranged the cushions comfortably for her.

‘Not very well,’ said Catherine, turning a little red and looking oddly like a child caught out in ill behaviour, thought Virginia.

How strange the way the tables of life turned, and how imperceptibly yet quickly one changed places. Here was her mother looking just as she was sure she herself used to look when she was caught out doing wrong things with the fruit or the jam. But why? Virginia couldn’t think why she should look so.

‘I shall sleep better when I’ve got more used to the bed,’ said Catherine, who was unnerved by the knowledge that Stephen’s conversation did inevitably dispose her to drowsiness, and that Virginia was on the verge of finding it out.

Used to the bed. Virginia turned this expression over in her mind with grave eyes fixed on her mother, who was smoothing her skirt over her ankles.

Used to the bed. It suggested infinity to Virginia. You couldn’t get used to a bed without practice in spending nights in it; you couldn’t get used to anything without many repetitions. How she wished she could be frank with her mother and ask her straight out how long she meant to stay. But could one ever be frank with either one’s mother or with one’s guest? And when both were combined! As a daughter she wasn’t able to say anything, as a hostess she wasn’t able to say anything, and as a daughter and a hostess rolled into one her muzzling was complete.

Virginia watched her mother gravely as she busied herself making her comfortable. It was for her mother to give some idea of her intentions, and she hadn’t said a word.

‘Are you quite comfortable, dearest?’ Catherine asked, kissing the solemn young face before going away.

‘Quite, thank you. Sweet of you, mother,’ said Virginia, closing her eyes.

For some reason she suddenly wanted to cry. Things were so contrary; it was so hard that she and Stephen couldn’t be left alone; yet her mother was so kind, and one would hate to hurt her. But one’s husband and his happiness--did not they come first?

Her mother went away, shutting the door softly. Virginia lay listening for Stephen’s footsteps.

Her forehead had a pucker in it again.

Used to the bed....

XIV

Catherine was safe at Chickover; for that much she was thankful. But, apart from safety, what a strange, different place it now seemed to her.

Each night throughout that week as she undressed, she had a fresh set of reflections to occupy her mind. It was a queer week. It had an atmosphere of its own. In this developing dampness--for so at last it presented itself to her imagination--she felt as if her wings, supposing she had any, hung more and more stiffly at her side. As the solemn days trudged one by one heavily past she had a curious sensation of ebbing vitality. Life was going out of her. Mists were closing in on her. The house was so quiet that it made her feel deaf. After dark there were so few lights that it made her feel blind. Oh yes, she was safe,--safe from that mad young man; but there were other things here--strange, uncomfortable things. There was this depressing feeling of a slow, creeping, choking, wet fog gradually enveloping her.

On Monday night as she undressed she didn’t think like this, she hadn’t got as far. All she did on Monday night was to go over the events of the day with mild wonder. She had said a great many prayers that day; for not only had there been family prayers before breakfast and the last thing at night, but Stephen had asked her after tea whether she wouldn’t like to go with him to evening service.

A host’s suggestions are commands. When he invites, one must needs accept. Indeed, she had accepted with the propitiatory alacrity common in guests when their hosts invite, aware that he was doing his best, with the means at his disposal, to entertain her, and anxious to show herself grateful. Where other hosts take their guests to look at ruins, or similar unusual sights, Stephen took his to church.

‘Oh--delightful,’ she had exclaimed on his proposing it; and only afterwards reflected that this was perhaps not quite the right word.

Virginia didn’t go with them, because so much kneeling and standing mightn’t be good for her, and she and Stephen set out after tea in the windy dusk by themselves, Stephen carrying the lantern that would be lit for their walk home in the dark. Catherine, accordingly, had had two <i>tête-à-tête</i> talks with Stephen that day, but as she was walking rather fast during them, and there was a high wind into the bargain, flicking her blood, she had had no trouble in keeping awake. Also there was the hope of the quiet relaxing in church at the end, with no need to make any effort for a while, to support her.

But there in the pew that used to be hers, sitting in it established and spread out, was Stephen’s mother; and Stephen’s mother was of those who are articulate in church, who like to set an example of distinctness in prayer and praise, and look round at people who merely mumble. Catherine, who was a mumbler, had had to speak up and sing up. There was no help for it. One of Mrs. Colquhoun’s looks was enough, and she found herself docilely doing, as she so often in life had found herself docilely doing, what was expected of her.

Afterwards she and Mrs. Colquhoun had waited together in the porch for Stephen to come out of his vestry, the while exchanging pleasant speech, and then they had all three gone on together to a meeting in the schoolroom--Catherine hadn’t known there was to be a meeting as well as the service--at which Stephen was giving an address.

‘Would you care to come round to the schoolroom?’ he had asked her on joining his two mothers in the porch, buttoning his coat as he spoke, for it was flapping wildly in the wind. ‘I am giving an address.’

At this point Catherine had felt a little overwhelmed by his hospitality; but, unable to refuse, had continued to accept.

He gave an informing address. She hadn’t known till she heard it that they were at the beginning of the week before the week that ends in Easter, the busiest fortnight of the clerical year, and she now discovered that there were to be daily morning and evening services, several sermons, and many meetings, between that day and the following Sunday.

Would she have to come to them all? she asked herself, as she sat with Mrs. Colquhoun, after having been stopped several times on her way to her seat by old friends in the parish, people she had known for years; and always <i>tête-à-tête</i> with Stephen during the walk there and back, and always under Mrs. Colquhoun’s supervision in the pew?

Up on the platform, in front of an enormous blackboard, stood Stephen, giving his address. He told his parishioners they were entering the very most solemn time of the whole year, and exceptional opportunities were being offered of observing it. He read out a list of the opportunities, and ended by exhorting those present to love one another and, during this holy season, to watch without ceasing and pray. Yes, she would have to come to them all. A guest is a helpless creature; a mother-in-law guest is a very helpless creature; an uninvited mother-in-law guest is a thing bound hand and foot.

Soberly, when the meeting was over, she walked out of the stuffy schoolroom with its smell of slates, into the great wind-swept cleanness of the night. It was nearly half-past seven, and she and Stephen were unable therefore to accept Mrs. Colquhoun’s invitation to go into the Rectory and rest. She had had, however, to promise to look in the next day but one--‘That is, dear Mrs. Cumfrit,’ Mrs. Colquhoun had said, suggesting the next day but one as a test of the length of her visit, ‘if you will still be here. You will? Delightful.’