XI
Virginia, coming back to the house on Sunday from a short after-luncheon stroll in the garden, where the daffodils were making a great show and the blackbirds a great noise, with the intention of putting her feet up till tea and lying quietly in her boudoir, was surprised to see her mother standing on the terrace.
Her first thought was of Stephen. Her mother had never yet come uninvited and unexpected. Was anything wrong with him?
She hastened her steps. ‘Anything wrong?’ she called out anxiously.
Her mother shook her head reassuringly, and came down to meet her.
They kissed.
‘I had such a longing to see you,’ said Catherine, in answer to Virginia’s face of wonder; and, clinging to her a little, she added, ‘I felt I wanted to be close to you—quite close.’
She took Virginia’s arm, and they walked back slowly towards the house.
‘Sweet of you, mother,’ said Virginia, who was taller than her mother, having taken after George in height as well as features; but still she wondered.
She wondered even more when later on she saw her mother’s luggage. It suggested a longer stay than any she had yet made. But even as they strolled towards the house she felt a little uneasy. Her mother had been so satisfactory till now, so careful not to intrude, not to mar the felicities of the early married months. Stephen had warmly praised her admirable tendency to absence rather than presence, and Virginia had been very proud of having provided him with a mother-in-law he admitted could not be bettered. She loved to lay every good gift in her possession at Stephen’s feet, and had rejoiced that her mother should be another of them. Was there going now to be a difference?
She said nothing, however, except that it was a pity she hadn’t known her mother was coming, so that her room might have been ready for her.
‘And how did you manage at the station, mother, with nothing to meet you?’ she asked.
‘I got the fly from the Dragon. I had to wait, of course, but not long. Old Mr. Pearce was so kind, and drove me himself. I would have let you know, but I hadn’t time. I—I suddenly felt I must be with you. I had a longing to be just here, peacefully. It doesn’t put you out, dearest?’
‘But of course not, mother. Only you have missed hearing Stephen preach to-night.’
‘Yes. I’m sorry. I saw him yesterday, though. He dined with me.’
‘Oh, did he?’ said Virginia, suddenly eager. ‘How was he? How did he seem? Had he had a good journey up? Did he say anything about the sandwiches? I’ve got a new cook, and I don’t know if her sand——’
‘Has Mrs. Benson gone?’
‘Yes. We decided she was too expensive. You see, our idea is to cut down unnecessary expenses in the house so as to have more to carry out our schemes with, and this is the first time the new one has had to cut sandwiches. Did Stephen say anything about them?’
‘No; so I expect they were all right.’
‘I do hope they were. He hates restaurant cars, you know, and won’t go and have a proper lunch in them. And it’s important——’
‘Of course. How are you, darling?’
‘Quite well. It’s wonderful how well I feel. How did you think Stephen was looking?’
‘Quite well.’
‘Not tired? That journey every week is so tiring. I must say I shall be glad when Lent is over. Isn’t it wonderful, mother, how he works, how he gives up his life——’
‘And how very well he is preaching. You have made him preach like that.’
‘I?’
‘Yes. By just loving him.’
Virginia blushed. ‘But who could help it?’ she asked.
‘And by believing in him.’
‘I think everybody must believe in Stephen,’ she said.
Her mother pressed her arm. ‘Darling,’ she said softly; and thought how strange a thing love was, how strange that Virginia, by taking this spinster-man, this middle-aged dry man, and just loving him with all her simple young heart and entirely believing in him, had made him, so completely commonplace before in all his utterances, suddenly—at least in the pulpit—sing. Was it acute, personal experience that one needed? Did one only cry out the truth really movingly when under some sort of lash, either of grief or ecstasy?
They went up the broad steps on to the familiar terrace. George’s peacocks—George had been of opinion that manors should have peacocks—were behaving as peacocks ought. In the great tubs on each side of the row of long windows—George had seen pictures of terraces, and they all had tubs—the first tulips were showing buds. The bells had begun to ring for afternoon service, and the sound floated across the quiet tree-tops as it had floated on all the Sundays of all the years Catherine had spent in that place. Such blameless, such dignified years. Every corner of them open to the light. Years of clear duties, clear affections—family years. And here was her serious young daughter carrying on the tradition. And here was she too come back to it, but come back to it disgracefully, to hide. She hiding! She winced, and held on tighter to Virginia’s arm. What would Virginia say if she knew? It seemed to Catherine that even her soul turned red at the bare thought.
They went into the boudoir, so recently her own—‘I was just going to rest a little,’ said Virginia. ‘Yes, you must take great care not to stand about too much,’ said her mother—and Catherine tucked her up on the sofa, as she had so often tucked her up in her cot, and there they stayed talking, while the sweet damp smells a garden is so full of in early spring came in through the open window, and filled the room with delicate promises.
Throughout the afternoon Virginia talked, and Catherine listened. So it had always been in that family: Catherine listened. How thankful she was to listen now, not to be asked questions, not to have it noticed that she looked pale and heavy-eyed, leaning back in her own old chair, her head, which ached, on a cushion she remembered covering herself. Her humiliated head; the head Christopher only a few hours before had held in both his hands and—no, she wouldn’t, she couldn’t think of it.
Virginia had much to tell of all that she and Stephen were doing and planning and hoping and intending. Drastic changes were being made; the easy-going old days at the Manor were over for ever. She did not say this in so many words, because it might, perhaps, have been tactless, for were not the old easy-going ways her mother’s ways? But it was evident that a pure flame of reform, of determination to abolish the old arrangements and substitute arrangements that improved, helped, and ultimately sanctified, was sweeping over Chickover. Her father’s money, so long used merely on the unimaginative material well-being of a small domestic circle—she didn’t quite put it this way, but so it drifted into Catherine’s consciousness—was to be spread out like some rich top-dressing—nor did she say just this, yet Catherine had a vision of a kind of holy manure, and Stephen, girt with righteousness, digging it diligently in—across the wide field of the whole parish, and the crop that would spring up would be a crop of entirely sanitary dwellings. No one, said Virginia—it seemed to Catherine that it was the voice of Stephen—could live in an entirely sanitary dwelling without gradually acquiring an entirely sanitary body, and from a sanitary body to a sanitary soul was only a step.
‘Stephen said something about that yesterday,’ said Catherine, her eyelids drooping as she lay back in her chair.
‘He puts it so wonderfully. I can’t explain things as he does, but I’d like just to give you an idea, mother——’
‘I’d love to hear,’ said Catherine, her voice sounding very small and tired.
On the table beside Virginia’s sofa were estimates and plans in a pile. She explained them to her mother one after the other, and the most convoluted plumbing, set forth in diagrams that looked exactly like diagrams Catherine had seen of people’s insides, were as nothing to Virginia. She knew them by heart; she understood them clearly; she could and did tell her mother things about drains that Catherine would never have dreamed of left to herself. Lucidly she described the different drainage systems available, and their various advantages and drawbacks. No detail of plumbing was too small to be explored. For half an hour she talked of taps; for another she expounded geysers; and as for plugs, Catherine had no idea of all the things a plug could do to you and your health and happiness if you didn’t in the first instance approach it with care and caution.
She lay back in her chair and listened. It was like listening to water running from one of Virginia’s newest type of tap. It went on and on, and only an occasional word, or even a mere sound of agreement was required of her. Outside, the afternoon sun lit up the beautiful leafless beeches, and when the bells left off ringing she could hear the blackbirds again. Blessed, blessed tranquillity. She felt as people do after an illness—just wanting to rest, to be quiet.
And here she knew she was entirely safe from questions. Virginia never asked her questions about herself or what she was doing. George had been like that, too, pouring out everything to her, but not demanding that she should pour back. What a precious quality this was really, though she remembered it had sometimes made her feel lonely. How valuable, though, now. No solicitous questionings embarrassed her. She was aware she was pale and puff-eyed, but Virginia wouldn’t notice. She couldn’t have stood her daughter’s young gaze of inquiry. Oh, she would have been ashamed, ashamed....
Her head ached badly. She hadn’t had any breakfast, in her wild desire to get away, to escape from Hertford Street before anything more could happen to her, and the slow Sunday train had offered no occasion for lunch. But she wasn’t in the least hungry; she only wanted to sit there quiet and feel safe. Virginia, absorbed in all she had to talk about, hadn’t thought of the possibility of her mother’s not having had lunch. The arrival at such an unusual time had surprised her out of her customary hospitable solicitudes, for she took her duties as hostess of the Manor with much seriousness, and wouldn’t for worlds have failed in any of them. Catherine, too, had forgotten lunch. She wanted nothing in the world but to get here, to sit quiet, to be safe.
While they were having tea, Mrs. Colquhoun the elder, Stephen’s mother, called in to see her daughter-in-law.
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.