Love

XVI

The next morning Catherine went to church for the last time—for when Stephen was in London, and not there to invite her to accompany him, which he solemnly before each separate service did, there would be no more need to go—and for the last time mingled her psalms with Mrs. Colquhoun’s.

The psalms at Morning Prayer were said, not sung, and she was in the middle of joining with Mrs. Colquhoun in asserting that it was better to trust in the Lord than to put any confidence in man, which at that moment she was very willing to believe, when she felt she was being stared at.

She looked up from her prayer-book, but could see only a few backs, and, one on each side of the chancel, Stephen and Mr. Lambton tossing the verses backwards and forwards across to each other, as if they were a kind of holy ball. She went on with her psalm, but the feeling grew stronger, and at last, contrary to all decent practice, she turned round.

There was Christopher.

She stood gazing at him, her open prayer-book in her hand, for such an appreciable moment that Mrs. Colquhoun had to say the next verse without her.

The same stone, said Mrs. Colquhoun very loud and distinctly, and in a voice of remonstrance—for really, what had come over Virginia’s mother, turning her back on the altar in this manner?—which the builders refused is become the head-stone of the corner.

She had to say all the other verses without her as well, and all subsequent responses, because Virginia’s mother, though she presently resumed her proper eastward position, was thenceforth—such odd behaviour—dumb.

Perhaps she was not feeling well. She certainly looked pale, or, rather, yellow, thought Mrs. Colquhoun, observing her during the reading of the first lesson, through which she sat with downcast eyes and grew, so it seemed to Mrs. Colquhoun, steadily yellower.

‘Dear Mrs. Cumfrit,’ whispered Mrs. Colquhoun at last, bending towards her, for she really did look sick, and it would be terrible if she—‘would you like to go out?’

‘Oh no,’ was the quick, emphatic answer.

The service came to an end, it seemed to Catherine, in a flash. She hadn’t had time to settle anything at all in her mind. She didn’t in the least know what she was going to do. How had he found her? Had Mrs. Mitcham betrayed her? After her orders, her strict, exact orders? Was everybody failing her, even Mrs. Mitcham? How dared he follow her. It was persecution. And what was she to do, what was she to do, if he behaved badly, if he showed any of his idiotic, his mad feelings?

She knelt so long after the benediction that Mrs. Colquhoun began to fidget. Mrs. Colquhoun couldn’t get out. She was hemmed into the pew by the kneeling figure. The few worshippers went away, and still Virginia’s mother—really most odd—knelt. The outer door of the vestry was banged to, which meant Stephen and Mr. Lambton had gone, and still she knelt. The verger came down the aisle with his keys jingling to lock up, and still she knelt. ‘This,’ thought Mrs. Colquhoun, vexed by such a prolonged and ill-timed devoutness, ‘is ostentation.’ And she touched Catherine’s elbow. ‘Dear Mrs. Cumfrit——’ she reminded her.

Catherine got up, very pale. The moment had come when she must turn and face Christopher.

But the church was empty. No one was in it except the verger, waiting down by the door with his keys and looking patient. If only Christopher had gone right away—if only something in the service had touched him, and made him see he was behaving outrageously, and he had gone right away....

The porch, too, was empty. Perhaps he had really gone. Perhaps—she almost began to hope he had never been there, that she had imagined him. She walked slowly beside Mrs. Colquhoun along the path to the churchyard gate. Stephen had hurried off to a sick-bed, Mr. Lambton had withdrawn to his lodgings to prepare his Sunday sermons.

‘I’m afraid you felt unwell in church,’ said Mrs. Colquhoun, suiting her steps to Catherine’s, which were small and slow, which, in fact, dragged.

‘I have rather a headache to-day,’ said Catherine, in a voice that trailed away into indistinctness, for, on turning a bend in the path, there once more was Christopher.

He was examining George’s tomb.

Mrs. Colquhoun saw him at the same moment, and her attention was at once diverted from Catherine. Strangers were rare in that quiet corner of the world, and she scrutinised this one with keen, interested eyes. The young man in his leather motoring-clothes pleased her, for not only was he a well-set-up young man, but he was reading poor Mr. Cumfrit’s inscription bareheaded. So, in her opinion, should all hic jacet inscriptions be read. It showed, thought Mrs. Colquhoun, a rather delicate reverence, not usually found in these wild scorchers of the road. If Mr. Cumfrit had been the Unknown Warrior himself his inscription couldn’t have been read more respectfully.

She was pleased, and wondered complacently who the stranger could be; and almost before she had had time to wonder, he turned from the tomb and came towards them.

‘Why, he seems——’ she began; for the young man was showing signs of recognition, his face was widening in greeting, and the next moment he was holding out his hand to her companion.

‘How do you do,’ he said, with such warmth that she concluded he must be Mrs. Cumfrit’s favourite nephew. She had never heard of any nephews, but most families have got some.

‘How do you do,’ replied her companion, with no warmth at all—with, indeed, hardly any voice at all.

The newcomer, standing bareheaded in the sun, seemed red all over. His face was very red, and his hair glowed. She liked the look of him. Vigour. Life. A relief after her bloodless companion.

‘Introduce us,’ she said briskly, with the frankness she felt her age entitled her to when dealing with young folk of the other sex. ‘I am sure,’ she said heartily, holding out her hand in its sensible, loose-fitting wash-leather glove, ‘you are one of Mrs. Cumfrit’s nephews, and our dear Virginia’s cousin.’

‘No, I’m dashed if I am,’ exclaimed the stranger. ‘I mean’—he turned an even more fiery red—‘I’m not.’

‘Mr. Monckton,’ said Catherine, in a far-away voice.

‘She doesn’t tell you who I am,’ smiled Mrs. Colquhoun, gripping his hand, still pleased with him in spite of his exclamation, for she liked young men, and there existed, besides, a tradition that she got on well with them, and knew how to manage them. ‘Have you noticed that people who introduce hardly ever do so completely? I’m the other mother-in-law.’

A faint hope began to flutter in Catherine’s heart. Christopher had the appearance of one who doesn’t know what to say next. She had never known him not know that before. If Mrs. Colquhoun could reduce him to silence, she might yet get through the next few minutes not too discreditably. ‘Mrs. Cumfrit and I,’ explained Mrs. Colquhoun, putting her arm through Catherine’s, as though elucidating her, ‘are both the mothers-in-law of the same delightful couple—I of her daughter, she of my son. We are linked together, she and I, in indissoluble bonds.’

Christopher wished to slay her as she stood. The liberal days were past, however, when one could behave simply, and as he couldn’t behave simply and slay her, he didn’t know how to behave to her at all.

‘The woman has a beak,’ he thought, standing red and tongue-tied before her. ‘She’s a bird of prey. She has got her talons into my Catherine. Linked together! Good God.’

Convention preventing his saying this out loud, or any of the other things he was feeling, he turned in silence and walked with them, on the other side of Catherine, towards the gate.

A faint desire to laugh stole like a small trickle of reviving courage through Catherine’s cowed spirit. It was the first desire of the kind she had had since she got to Chickover, and it arrived, she couldn’t help noticing, at the same time as Christopher.

Mrs. Colquhoun was a little surprised at the silence of her two companions. Mr. Monckton, whoever he might be, didn’t respond to her friendliness as instantly as other young men she had dealt with, and Mrs. Cumfrit said nothing either. Then she remembered her friend’s attack in church, and made allowances; while as for Mr. Monckton, whoever he might be, he probably was shy. Well, she knew how to manage shy young folk; they never stayed shy long with her.

‘Mrs. Cumfrit,’ she explained over the top of Catherine’s head to Christopher, ‘isn’t feeling very well to-day.’

‘Oh?’ said Christopher quickly, with a swift, anxious look at Catherine.

‘No. So we mustn’t make her talk, Mr. Monckton. She turned a little faint just now in church’—again the desire to laugh crept through Catherine. ‘She’ll be all right presently, and meanwhile you and I will entertain each other. You shall tell me all about yourself, and how it is you’ve dropped out of the clouds into our quiet little midst.’

Christopher’s earnest wish at that moment was to uproot one of the tombstones and with it fell Mrs. Colquhoun to the ground. That old jackdaw Stephen’s mother... birds of a feather... making him look and be a fool....

‘Do tell us,’ urged Mrs. Colquhoun pleasantly, across the top of Catherine’s head, as he said nothing.

Catherine, walking in silence between them, began to feel she was in competent hands.

‘There isn’t much to tell,’ said Christopher, thus inexorably urged, and flaming red to the roots of his flaming hair.

‘Everything,’ Mrs. Colquhoun assured him encouragingly, ‘interests us here. All is grist to our quiet little mills—isn’t it, dear Mrs. Cumfrit. Ah, no—I forgot. You are not to be made to talk. We will do it all for you, won’t we, Mr. Monckton.’

They had got to the gate. Christopher lunged at it to open it for them.

As Catherine went through it he said to her quickly, in a low voice, ‘You look years older.’

She raised her eyes a moment. ‘I always was,’ she murmured, with, she hoped, blood-curdling significance.

‘Older?’ repeated Mrs. Colquhoun, whose hearing, as she often told her friends, was still, she was thankful to say, unimpaired. ‘That, my young friend, is what may be said daily of us all. No doubt Mrs. Cumfrit notices a change even in you. Have you not met for a long while?’

‘Not for an eternity,’ said Christopher, in the sort of voice a man swears with.

A motor-cycle with a side-car was in the road outside the gate, and Mrs. Colquhoun paused on seeing it.

‘Yours, of course, Mr. Monckton,’ she said. ‘This is the machine in which you have dropped out of the skies on us. And with a side-car, too. An empty one, though. I don’t like to think of a young man with an empty side-car. But perhaps the young lady has merely gone for a little stroll?’

‘I have brought it to take Mrs. Cumfrit back to London in,’ said Christopher stiffly; but of what use stiffness, of what use dignity, when one was being made to look and be such a hopeless fool?

‘Really?’ said Mrs. Colquhoun, excessively surprised. ‘Only, she doesn’t go back till Monday—do you, dear Mrs. Cumfrit. Ah, no—don’t talk. I forgot.’

‘Neither do I,’ said Christopher.

‘Really?’ said Mrs. Colquhoun again; and was for a moment, in her turn, silent.

A side-car seemed to her a highly unsuitable vehicle for a person of Mrs. Cumfrit’s age. Nor could she recollect, during all the time she had, off and on, known her, ever having seen her in such a thing. Instinct here began to warn her, as she afterwards was fond of telling her friends, that the situation was not quite normal. How far it was from normal, however, instinct in her case, being that of a decent elderly woman presently to become a grandmother, was naturally incapable of guessing.

‘You didn’t tell us, dear Mrs. Cumfrit,’ she said, turning to her pale and obviously not very well companion, ‘that this was to be your mode of progress. Delightful, of course, in a way. But personally I should be afraid of the shaking. Young people don’t feel these things as we do. Are you, then,’ she continued, turning to Christopher, ‘staying in the neighbourhood over Sunday?’

‘Yes,’ said Christopher, taking a rug out of the side-car and unfolding it.

‘I wonder where. You’ll think me an inquisitive old woman, but really I wonder where. You see, I know this district so well, and there isn’t—oh, I expect you’re with the Parkers. They usually have a houseful of young people for the week-end. You’ll enjoy it. The country round is—What, are you going on, dear Mrs. Cumfrit? Then good-bye for the present. I shall see you at lunch. Virginia always likes me to come in on these Lenten Saturdays while Stephen is away. It has become a ritual. Now take my advice, and lie down for half an hour. I’m a very sensible person, Mr. Monckton, and know that one can’t go on for ever as if one were still twenty-five.’

Christopher stepped forward, intercepting Catherine. ‘I’ll drive you back,’ he said.

‘I’d rather walk,’ she said.

‘Then I’ll walk with you.’ And he threw the rug into the side-car again.

‘What? And leave your motor-cycle and rug and everything unprotected?’ exclaimed Mrs. Colquhoun, who had listened to this brief dialogue with surprise. Mr. Monckton, whoever he might be, was neither Mrs. Cumfrit’s son, for she hadn’t got one, nor her nephew, for he had himself said, with the emphasis of the male young, that he wasn’t, and his masterfulness seemed accordingly a little unaccountable.

‘You’d better let me drive you,’ he persisted to her pale companion, taking no notice of this exclamation. ‘You oughtn’t to walk.’

Was he, perhaps, thought Mrs. Colquhoun, a doctor? A young doctor? Mrs. Cumfrit’s London medical adviser? If so, of course.... Yet even then, her not having mentioned his expected arrival, and her plan for motoring up with him on Monday, was odd. Besides, nobody except the very rich had doctors dangling after them.

‘Let me drive you,’ said the young man again.

And Mrs. Cumfrit said—rather helplessly, Mrs. Colquhoun thought, as if she were seriously lacking in backbone, ‘Very well.’

It was all extremely odd.

‘Virginia will wonder,’ remarked Mrs. Colquhoun, looking on with a distinctly pursed expression while her colleague was being rolled into the rug as carefully as if she were china,—rolled right up to her chin in it, as if she were going thousands of miles, and at least to Lapland. ‘But no doubt you have told her Mr. Monckton was coming down.’

‘I shall only drive part of the way,’ answered Mrs. Cumfrit—there was a tinge of colour in her face now, Mrs. Colquhoun noticed; perhaps the tight rug was choking her—‘but I shall get back quicker like this.’

‘I wonder,’ said Mrs. Colquhoun grimly.

She watched them disappear in a cloud of dust, and then turned to go home, where she had several things to see to before lunching at the Manor; but, pausing, she decided that she would walk round into the village instead, and see if she could meet Stephen. Perhaps he would be able to explain Mr. Monckton.

And Catherine did not, after all, get back quicker. No sooner was she off, at what seemed to her a great pace, than she began to have misgivings about it, for it occurred to her that on her feet she could go where she liked, but in Christopher’s side-car she would have to go where he did.

‘That’s the turning,’ she called out—she found she had to speak very loud to get heard above the din the thing made—pointing to a road to the right a short distance ahead.

‘Is it?’ Christopher shouted back; and rushed past it.