Love

XIX

Catherine had walked very fast up the avenue, afraid she was late. Her face was hot with exercise, and her eyes bright with Christopher. She didn’t look like the same person who had set out that morning, listless and pale, with Stephen for church. She had somehow entirely wiped out Christopher’s behaviour in London, and felt she had started again with him on a new footing. She was happy, and wanted to tell Virginia of her new arrangements quickly, before their naturalness and desirability, so evident and clear while she was with Christopher, had faded and become obscure. She felt they might do that rather easily without him, especially as Mrs. Colquhoun was going to be at lunch.

She must be quick, while she still saw plain. Everybody wanted her to go, and she wanted to go; then why not go? Yes, but they wouldn’t be able to let her go without criticism, without disapproval. Dear me, she thought, how pleasant to be quite simple and straight. How pleasant to be free from sentimentalism, and all its grievances and tender places. How very pleasant not to mind if one’s children did sometimes get bored with one, and for them not to mind if you sometimes got bored with them.

She laughed a little at these aspirations, as she hurried towards her tall, unmoving daughter and waved her hand in greeting, because they sounded so very like a desire to be free of family life altogether. And she didn’t desire to be free of it, she clung to what remained of it for her, she clung to Virginia, her last shred of it, however different they were, however deeply they didn’t understand each other. Blood; strange, compelling, unbreakable link. Could one forget that that tall creature there, so aloof, so critical, had once been tiny and helpless, depending on her for her very life?

A fresh wave of love for her daughter washed over her. She felt so able to love and be happy at that moment. ‘I’m late—I know I’m late,’ she said breathlessly, running up the steps and kissing her. ‘Did you think I was lost, darling?’

‘I was afraid something might have happened, mother,’ said Virginia, very stiff and grave.

‘Darling—I’m so sorry. It didn’t upset you?’

‘I was a little afraid. But it’s all right now that you’ve come back. Lunch is ready, and mother is waiting. Shall we go in?’

‘She will have told you, hasn’t she, of my escapade,’ said Catherine a little nervously as they went indoors, for Virginia was so very grave.

‘I hope you had a pleasant drive,’ said Virginia, wincing at the word escapade. Mothers didn’t have escapades. Such things were for them, and indeed for most people who wished to live the lives of plain Christians, unsuitable.

She ached with different emotions. The only way to keep her feelings out of sight, safely hidden, was to encase herself in ice.

She sat at the head of the table, a mother on either hand, and helped them in turn icily to mince. On the Saturdays of Stephen’s absences both parlourmaids, once he had been seen off, were given a holiday, and the dishes were placed on the table by Ellen. There was always mince for lunch on these Saturdays, because mince rested the cook. Also, it didn’t have to be carved. But it is not a food to promote good-fellowship; impossible to be really convivial on mince. The three, however, wouldn’t have been convivial that day even if the table had been covered with, say, quails; for in the consciousness of each was, enormous and vivid, that side-car and the young man who belonged to it.

Both Virginia and Mrs. Colquhoun earnestly desired that neither it nor he should be mentioned during lunch, because of Ellen, and Mrs. Colquhoun did her best to talk well and brightly about everything except just that. But Catherine was anxious to tell them quickly, before she became any more congealed, what was going to happen next. She knew it was past one already, and that at two Christopher and the motor-cycle would appear to fetch her, and that the entire household would be aware of her departure in the side-car. She was obliged to talk of it, and at the very first pause in Mrs. Colquhoun’s conversation began to do so.

How difficult it was. Worse than she had feared. Her cheeks got hotter. Virginia’s face, and her grieved, astonished eyes, made her stammer. And Mrs. Colquhoun, when she heard of the drive planned for that afternoon to London, on top of the drive that morning to goodness knew where, merely raised her hands and ejaculated ‘Insatiable!’

For some reason Catherine found this brief ejaculation curiously disconcerting.

‘If you must go to-day, mother,’ said Virginia, stung and perplexed, ‘you might have gone with Stephen.’

‘Ah, but the fresh air, dear child—the fresh air,’ cried Mrs. Colquhoun, desiring to do what she could for her colleague in the eyes of Ellen. ‘Your mother looks a different creature already, after just her outing this morning. There’s nothing like fresh air. Air, air—it’s what we all need. And our windows——’ she glanced severely at Ellen, ‘opened wide at night.’

‘Besides,’ went on the wounded Virginia, ‘I thought you said Mrs. Mitcham was having a holiday.’

‘Darling, I must go up,’ murmured Catherine, mechanically eating mince. She couldn’t now go into what she had said about Mrs. Mitcham; she didn’t remember what she had said, and she couldn’t get involved in explanations, for if once she began there would be no end to them. ‘I—well, I must. I’ve been away from home so long this time.’

No, she didn’t know what to say. She had nothing to say. There was no reason nor explanation in the least suited to either Virginia’s or Mrs. Colquhoun’s ears. It was strange how people, when they were getting what they really wanted, yet disapproved, yet didn’t like it, she thought.

‘Of course, of course,’ said Mrs. Colquhoun heartily, desirous of dropping the subject as soon as possible because of Ellen. ‘Homes can’t be left. Homes are there so as not to be left. Or why have them? I do so approve, dear Mrs. Cumfrit. We shall miss you, of course, but I do so approve.’

She leant across the table and smiled. She had put the seal on her colleague; she had wrapped her in her own cloak. The servants, in the face of such protection, would be able to notice and wonder nothing.

They had prunes to finish up with. Nobody is long over prunes, and the three were out of the dining-room twenty minutes after they had gone into it.

Catherine went upstairs to see, she said, to her things. Virginia followed her. Mrs. Colquhoun assured them she didn’t mind being left, that she was never dull alone, would wait quite happily in the drawing-room, and they were not to give her a thought.

‘Mother——’ began Virginia, when they had got into the bedroom, her eyes dark with perplexity.

‘You don’t mind, darling?’ said Catherine, putting her arm round her. ‘I mean, my going all of a sudden like this?’

Then she laughed a little. ‘I came all of a sudden, and I’m going all of a sudden,’ she said. ‘Am I a very uncomfortable sort of mother to have?’

Virginia flushed a deep red. How could she say Yes, which was the truth? How could she say No, which was a lie?

‘Mother,’ she said painfully, for the question insisted on forcing its way through her protective coating of ice, ‘you’re not going away to-day because you think—because you think——’

She stopped, and looked at her mother.

And Catherine, as unable not to lie when it came to either lying or hurting, as Virginia was unable, faced by such an alternative, to be anything but stonily silent, kissed her softly on each cheek and said, ‘No, darling, I’m not. And I don’t think anything.’

It wasn’t quite a lie. She wasn’t going away that day because of Virginia; she was going away now because of Christopher. Life was intricate. Lies were so much mixed up with truth. And as for love, it got into everything, and wherever it was one seemed to have to lie. Ah, to be able to be simple and straight. The one thing that appeared to be really simple and straight and easy was ordinary, affectionate friendship. Not too affectionate; not, either, too ordinary; but warm, and steady, and understanding. In fact, what hers and Christopher’s was going to be.

Ellen came in and asked if she should pack. Nothing had been said to Ellen, Virginia knew, yet here she was, full of a devotion she never showed in her ordinary work.

Catherine explained that she couldn’t take her luggage with her, and Ellen said, just as if Catherine were still her mistress and Virginia still a little girl, that she would see that it went up by the next train. She then got out Catherine’s fur coat, and gave her her gloves and a thick veil, and insisted that she should wear gaiters, kneeling down and buttoning them for her.

Virginia might have been a stranger standing looking on. And her mother was laughing and talking to Ellen, rather after the fashion of a child going off for a holiday. In a way it was a relief, because it did seem as if she hadn’t noticed anything, but it was an odd mood in her mother; Virginia couldn’t remember any mood quite like it.

‘I’ll go down to mother,’ she said, taking refuge in the other one.

‘Do, darling,’ said Catherine, busy being buttoned up.

And Virginia, going down into the drawing-room, found a young man in brown leather there, being talked to by Mrs. Colquhoun, who turned round quickly when she came in, and whose face changed from eager to rather disagreeable, she thought, when he saw her.

‘This, Virginia, my child,’ said Mrs. Colquhoun with even more than her usual briskness, ‘is your mother’s old friend Mr. Monckton. Mr. Monckton, this is my daughter-in-law, Mrs. Stephen Colquhoun. Conceive its falling to my lot to make you two acquainted! I should have thought you would have lisped together in infant numbers, tumbled about like puppies together on lawns, been nursed upon the self-same hill. I hope, Mr. Monckton, you admire with me the poet I am quoting from?’

No; young people could never remain shy long when she was there. Yet presently she had to admit that with these two, anyhow, it was heavy going. They couldn’t be got to talk to each other. Dear little Virginia, of course, never did go in much for small chat, and Mr. Monckton’s disposition appeared after all not to correspond with his glowing exterior. He was as silent as if he had been puny and sallow. A picture of splendid youth, standing there on the hearth-rug—he wouldn’t sit down, he wouldn’t have coffee, he wouldn’t smoke, he wouldn’t talk, he wouldn’t do anything—he seemed to have really nothing in him. Except perhaps obstinacy; and possibly a hasty temper. Who and what he was, and why Mrs. Cumfrit should be friends with him, she couldn’t imagine. To all her questions—of course, tactfully put—he only made evasive answers, chiefly in monosyllables. Little Virginia was as silent as he was. Indeed, she seemed to take a dislike to him from the first. Later on, describing the meeting to her friends, Mrs. Colquhoun was fond of dwelling on the unerring instinct of that dear child.

‘We ought to be starting,’ said Christopher, looking at his wrist-watch.

It was intolerable to him being there alone with these two women, in the house that used to be Catherine’s, faced by the girl who was, he was certain, the living image of George, and who stood watching him with great critical eyes while the old lady enfiladed him with a non-stopping fire of God knew what.

‘I wish you’d tell your mother,’ he said, turning with a quick movement of impatience to Virginia.

She stared at him a moment without answering. Then she said slowly, ‘My mother will come when she is ready.’

‘Hoity toity,’ Christopher all but said aloud; and added under his breath, ‘young Miss.’

Then he remembered that she wasn’t a Miss at all, but the wife of that ancient bustard Stephen. Horrible as it was of her to go and marry anybody so moth-eaten with age, it yet gave him an argument, and a very mighty one, to use against Catherine when occasion should—and would—arise. In as far as this went, he was much obliged to Virginia; but except for this he didn’t mind admitting that he regarded her with aversion. She oughtn’t to be there at all. Unborn, she would have been perfectly all right and comfortable, and Catherine wouldn’t have had any of her ideas about being the mother of a married daughter, and what would Virginia say, and all such stuff. Directly he saw the girl, and her cold eyes and her determined mouth, he knew he was going to have trouble with Catherine when things had reached their crisis—as they were bound to do—about what Virginia would say, and think, and feel. He knew it, he knew it.

‘Oh, damn——’ he muttered; and jerked up his elbow to look at his wrist-watch again.

‘If your mother doesn’t come soon,’ he said, ‘I see no prospect of our reaching London to-night.’ And to himself, spirit grinning, he added, ‘That’ll fetch them.’

It did.

‘Really, Virginia,’ Mrs. Colquhoun instantly said, turning to her with a kind of shocked bristling, ‘do go up and tell your mother she must hurry. Or shall I? The stairs——’

But there was Catherine, coming in like light and warmth, he thought, into a dark and frost-bound place.

‘Oh, Christopher!’ she exclaimed in her surprise at seeing him there—(‘Christopher,’ noted Mrs. Colquhoun)—‘You here already? I didn’t hear you arrive. Aren’t you very early?’

‘Far from being very early,’ said Mrs. Colquhoun, rising from her chair preparatory to going into the hall to witness this unique departure, ‘Mr. Monckton says it is very late. Hardly time, indeed, to get to London.’

‘Oh, but let us go at once, then. Have you been introduced to Virginia? Oh, yes, I’ve got a fur coat—it’s in the hall. Virginia darling, take care of yourself, won’t you. Good-bye, Mrs. Colquhoun—oh yes, I know you will—I do know she is perfectly safe in your hands. And whenever you want me, dearest—whenever you want me, you’ve only got to send me one little word, and I’ll come.’

‘Sweet of you, mother.’

Even with her mother the girl was like a poker—a cold poker, thought Christopher, who felt he might have forgiven her being a poker if only she had been a red hot one. But how excessively he hated all this, how excessively he hated seeing Catherine in these relationships. Why had she made him come in? Why need he ever have seen Virginia, and been introduced, and have to make the fool grimaces of convention? Well, he would soon have put miles between themselves and Chickover, and he fervently hoped he might never see the beastly place again.

Once more he tucked Catherine in the rug up to her chin. This time she was laughing. The two women on the steps, watching the departure, weren’t laughing. Virginia’s face was expressionless; Mrs. Colquhoun’s had the smile on it of hospitality got down to its dregs—the fixed smile of determination not to relax one hairs-breadth of proper geniality till the door was shut and the guest round the corner. On her son’s behalf, she told herself, she saw his late guest off. Virginia, of course, was doing it on her own behalf, but Mrs. Colquhoun was even more important, for she represented the master of the house. How thankful she was that he wasn’t there to do it himself. What would he have thought of it all?

She put on her eyeglasses in order to see better what was going on down there. The young man, busy with the rug, no longer looked as he had looked in the drawing-room; his face now shone with smiles. So did Mrs. Cumfrit’s. Mrs. Colquhoun could not help being struck by this air of gaiety. And she remembered Mrs. Cumfrit’s yellowness and fatigue on her arrival the previous Sunday, and the way she had remained yellow and had got visibly older all the week, ending up in church that morning by being on the verge either of being sick or fainting—perhaps both. There was no sign of this now. On the contrary, she looked remarkably healthy. Odd; very odd.

‘Oh—good-bye. Good-bye. Now, Mr. Monckton, be very careful, won’t you——’

They were gone. In an instant, it seemed, they were a speck down the avenue, and then the bend hid them, the sound of them died away, and she and Virginia had Chickover to themselves again.

The word harum-scarum entered Mrs. Colquhoun’s mind. She dismissed it. She couldn’t admit a word like that in connection with her Stephen’s mother-in-law.

She looked at Virginia. Virginia was staring straight in front of her at the avenue, at the afternoon sun lying along its emptiness.

‘I do think it good of your dear mother to bother about that young man,’ said Mrs. Colquhoun. ‘Let us hope she will teach him better manners. And now,’ she added briskly, laying an affectionate arm round her daughter-in-law’s shoulder, ‘isn’t it time our little Virginia put her feet up?’