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By this time it was a quarter past nine; quite early, and yet how late it seemed. Catherine went back to the sofa, and turning out the light on the table by her side, for she was being very cautious this first year of her limited income and not wasting anything, put her feet up and lay in the firelight, feeling a little tired.
Stephen, as a cool refuge from the warmths of Christopher, had been restful, but only up to a certain point. He had provided the sort of relief the cool air of a cellar gives those coming rather blinded out of the heat of the sun, and, like a cellar, he had presently palled. She had long ago found, and it had been greatly to her regret, that it was difficult to keep her eyes open after a short time alone with Stephen. She thought this must be due to his conversation. There was nothing to lay hold of in it. It was bony. One slipped off. Besides, he didn’t talk to her as if she were anything but another bone. Bones to bones; how dreary; how little one likes being behaved to as if one were a bone. Yet he knew now about love, and nobody could hear him preach without being thrilled by his appreciation of it. He appreciated it in his sermons in all its branches. At present in his life there was only one branch really living, and that was married love. All those other loves he praised—brotherly love, which he entreated might continue; the love of friends, surpassing, he declared, in beauty and dignity the love of the sexes; that large love of humanity, which needs must well from every thinking heart—were theories to him. Well, perhaps by sheer talking about them from pulpits to impressed congregations they would gradually become real. One did, in a very remarkable way, talk oneself into attitudes of mind that altered one’s entire behaviour; or was talked into them by somebody else, which was less excellent—in fact, should be guarded against.
She shut her eyes. She was tired.
Little children, love one another.... He could say that beautifully—and how beautiful it was—but he didn’t do it himself. Except Virginia, the rest of the world was at present left out from Stephen’s loving. The exhortation had been for her and Mrs. Mitcham, who had long loved one another in the form of affection and daily mutual courtesies.
Little children, love....
She was tired. She hadn’t walked so fast or so much for ages as she had that afternoon at Hampton Court. And the spring air was relaxing. And Christopher had such long legs, and strode easily over ground that took her innumerable small steps to cover. And, being clearly mad as well, it wasn’t only her feet he had fatigued, but her spirit. Stephen, so passive and indifferent; Christopher, so active and not indifferent enough; and she between them being agreeable, and agreeable, and for ever agreeable. Why did a woman always try, however fruitlessly, as with Stephen, or dangerously, as with Christopher, to be agreeable? She feared it was, at bottom, vanity. Anyhow it was very stupid, when it was so tiring, so tiring....
Little children, love....
She dozed; she more than dozed; she went to sleep. And she hadn’t been asleep five minutes before Christopher came back.
There was her wrap—he hadn’t given her her wrap yet, and found it when he went out where he had dropped it on the carpet outside her door. In any case he had meant to wait in the street till that incredible old son-in-law—that she should dare to try to put him off with stuff about the generations!—had gone, and then see her again unless it was very late. But the wrap made it his duty to see her again; and when he beheld, from the opposite pavement, Stephen emerge and go away at a quarter past nine, he walked up and down for another ten minutes in case the old raven should have forgotten something and come back, and then, the wrap on his arm, went in and up the stairs with all the dignity and composure that legitimate business bestows.
But he was not really composed; not inside. When Mrs. Mitcham opened the door at his ring and, still under the influence of Stephen’s exhortation to love one another, smiled brightly at him, he could hardly stammer out that he had something of Mrs. Cumfrit’s—her wrap——
‘Oh, thank you, sir. I’ll take it,’ said Mrs. Mitcham.
‘Well, but I want to see Mrs. Cumfrit a minute—it isn’t late—it’s quite early—I’ll go in for just a minute——’
And thrusting the wrap into her hand he made for the drawing-room.
She watched him shut the door behind him, and hoped it didn’t matter, her not announcing him. After all, he had but lately left; it wasn’t as if he were calling that day for the first time. On the contrary, this was the third time since lunch that he had come in.
She stood uncertain a moment in the hall, ready to let him out again if he did only stay a minute; then, when he did not reappear, she went back to the kitchen.
Now Christopher might have behaved quite differently if he had found Catherine wide awake in her chair, properly lit up, and reading or sewing. He had meant, in coming back, only to reason with her. He couldn’t be sent away, cut short in the middle of a sentence and cast out as he had been by Stephen’s entrance, and not see her again at least to finish what he had to say. If she wouldn’t listen now, at least they might arrange an hour the next day when she would. He couldn’t go home to just black misery. He couldn’t. He was a human being. There were things a human being simply couldn’t do. He would see her again that evening, if only to find out when she would let him call and talk quietly. Surely she owed him this. He hadn’t done anything to offend her really, except tell her that he loved her. And was that an offence? No; it was most natural, inevitable and right, he assured his shrinking heart. For his heart did shrink; it was very fearful, because he knew she would be angry when she saw him. He could barely get the words out to Mrs. Mitcham at the door, so short was he of breath because of his heart. It was behaving as if he had been tearing up six flights of stairs, instead of walking slowly up one.
Then, inside the room, instead of light, and Catherine looking up from whatever she was doing at him with surprise and reproach, he found first darkness, and presently, as he stood uncertain and his eyes grew more accustomed to it, the outline of Catherine in the dull glow of the fire, motionless on the sofa. He couldn’t see if she was asleep. She said nothing and didn’t move. She must be asleep. And just at that moment a flame leapt out of the coals, and he saw that she was asleep.
The most extraordinary feeling flooded his heart. All the mothers in his ancestry crowded back to life in him. She looked so little, and helpless and vulnerable. She looked so tired, with no colour at all in her face. Not for anything in the world would Christopher have disturbed that sleep. He would creep away softly, and simply bear the incertitude as to when he was to see her again. Such an immense tenderness he had never in his life felt. He knew now that he loved her beyond all things, and far beyond himself.
He turned to go away, holding his breath, feeling for the door handle, when his foot knocked against the leg of George’s big chair.
Catherine woke up. ‘Mrs. Mitcham——’ she began, drowsily. And then as no one answered, for though he tried to he couldn’t, she put out her hand and turned on the light.
They blinked at each other.
Astonishment, succeeded by indignation, spread over Catherine’s face. She could hardly believe her eyes. Christopher. Back again. Got into her flat like a thief. Stealing in in the dark....
She sat up, leaning on her hands. ‘You!’ was all she could find to say.
‘Yes, I had to. I had to bring you back your——’
He was going to shelter behind her cloak, and then was ashamed of such trifling.
She made a movement to get up, but the sofa was a very low one, and she rather ridiculously bumped down on it again; and before she could make another attempt he had flown across to help her.
‘No, no,’ said Catherine, whose indignation was greater than any she had felt in her life, pushing aside his outstretched hands.
So then he lifted her up bodily, indifferent to everything else in the world; and having set her on her feet he held her like that, tightly in his arms, and didn’t care if he had to die for it.
There was a moment’s complete silence. Catherine was so much amazed that for a moment she was quite still.
Then she gave a gasp—muffled, because of his coat, against which her face was pressed. ‘Oh——’ she gasped, faint and muffled, trying to push him away.
She might as well have tried to push a rock away.
‘Oh——’ she gasped again, as Christopher, still not caring if he had to die for it, began kissing her. He kissed what he could—her hair, the tip of one ear, and she, aghast, horrified, buried her face deeper and deeper into his coat in her efforts to protect it.
Oh, the outrage—never in her life—how dared he, how dared he—just because she was alone, and had no one to defend her——
Not a word of this came out; it was entirely muffled in his coat. Aghast and horrified, Catherine continued to have the top of her head kissed, and her aghastness and horror became overwhelming when she realised that she—no, it wasn’t possible, it couldn’t be that she—that this—that she was somehow, besides being horrified, strangely shot through by a feeling that was not unpleasant? Impossible, impossible....
‘Let me go,’ she gasped into his coat. ‘Let me go——’
For answer he took her head in his hands and held it back and kissed her really, right on her mouth, as no one in her life before had ever kissed her.
Impossible, impossible....
She stood, her arms hanging by her side, her body quivering. She didn’t seem able to move. She seemed as if she were becoming every instant more drawn into this, more absorbed in what was happening—as profoundly absorbed as he was, as remote from realities. The room disappeared, the relics of George disappeared, the world disappeared, and all the reminders of the facts of her life. Youth had swept down out of the skies and caught her up in its arms into a strange, warm oblivion. He and she were not any longer Christopher and Catherine—Catherine tied up in a tangle of relationships, of obligations, of increasing memories, Christopher an impetuous young man who needed tremendously to be kept in his proper place: she was simply the Beloved, and he was Love.
‘I worship you,’ murmured Christopher.
Through her dream she heard him murmuring, and it woke her up to consciousness.
She opened her eyes and looked up at him.
He was gazing down at her—beautiful, all light. She stared at him an instant, still held in his arms, collecting her thoughts.
What had she done? What was she doing? What was this? Oh, but it was shameful, shameful....
She made one immense effort, and with both her hands pushed him away; and before he could stop her, for he too was in a dream, she had run to the door and flown along the passage to her bedroom and locked herself in.
Then she rang violently for Mrs. Mitcham, and told her through the shut door to let Mr. Monckton out—she was going to bed at once—she had a terrible headache.... And she sat down on her bed and cried bitterly.