Love

III

Her nephew. So that was what Christopher seemed to be to this impartial stranger. It gave Catherine more than a shock, it made her heart feel as if it stood still. And his surprise, his humiliating surprise, when she said Christopher was her husband, and her own discomfort when she told him....

Was it so much marked, then, the difference between them? It hadn’t been in London. Why, in London before they married they had often stood arm in arm in front of a glass and laughed to see how no one would guess, really no one could possibly guess, that they were not very nearly of an age. Besides what about all those bus-conductors and people calling her Miss? One of them had even called her Missie—‘Take care, now, Missie,’ he had said, catching her by the arm, ‘don’t you go jumping off before we’re stopped and breaking your neck and getting us into trouble with your young man’—but he, she was afraid, had been drinking. It must be because she was so tired now always that she looked older. To-day she was tired, yesterday she had been tired—oh, but so tired, so tired.

She stared up at Mr. Jerrold, while the flush faded out of her face, and thought how dreadful it was going to be if every time she was tired people took her for Christopher’s aunt. What a humiliation. And inevitably sooner or later he would notice it himself, and hear it too from strangers, just as she was hearing it from this stranger.

‘Let us sit down,’ said Mr. Jerrold sensibly, ‘and wait for them to come back.’

And a day or two afterwards, when Christopher, impelled by his desire for movement, by a terrific longing to do something, anything, that wasn’t lying in grass reading poetry to Catherine—if he didn’t read poetry to her she was surprised and asked him why, because at the beginning he had wanted to do nothing else—hired a two-seater and drove her round the island, stopping for the night at a little place on the west side where there was a small hotel they liked the look of, on their going in and asking if they could be put up for the night the young lady in the office, glancing at them, said she was very sorry but she had only one room vacant.

‘But we only want one,’ said Christopher, surprised at this answer. ‘We want a double room, that’s all.’

‘Oh, I’m sorry——’ said the young lady, turning red and bending over her ledger to hide her confusion. ‘Yes——’ she said, running her finger down the page, ‘I can give you No. 7.’

‘Do you think she thought we weren’t married?’ said Christopher, amused, when they were in No. 7 undoing their suit-cases. ‘Or do you think she thought we were so grand that we couldn’t do without a sitting-room?’

Catherine, very busy it seemed with her suit-case, said nothing. She couldn’t have. She felt sick, as if some one had hit her head. Again she had been taken for Christopher’s aunt. Or even for his—no, her mind swerved aside from that word; it simply refused to look at it.

They saw no more of the Jerrolds, though Christopher had talked of long and violent scrambles with the eagerly acquiescent Billy while they sprinted on ahead that morning before he realised that Catherine had been left behind out of sight. When he did discover this he had turned back at once. ‘Come on,’ he had said to the surprised Billy, seizing her wrist, ‘we must run.’

And he had run; and she had run, thinking it great fun but wondering why they should be running; and after that, when they all joined up again, her father had taken her back to the hotel and the Moncktons had gone for their picnic by themselves, and she had never set eyes on them again nor heard anything more of the promised scrambles.

But one thing she had heard, and with astonishment, from her father, and that was that Mr. Monckton was Mrs. Monckton’s husband.

‘No!’ cried Billy, her eyes very round; adding, after a silence, ‘Good Lord.’

‘Quite,’ said her father.

A few days more and the honeymoon was at an end. Christopher had not attempted again to leave Catherine, for she didn’t seem well, though she assured him she was,—assured him eagerly, almost painfully eagerly, and that it was only the spring. He wasn’t quite able to believe this, and stayed with her and petted her. She loved to lie quite quiet in his arms, out of doors or anywhere, while he read to her or they both snoozed. He suppressed his fidgetings, because he knew if he said he wanted to walk she would want to walk with him, and then she would be tired out and he after all not exercised. It struck him once as odd how little they talked. They used to talk and talk before they were married. Now they hardly said anything, except when they began to whisper, and then it wasn’t talk, but emotion clothing itself scantily in words. Still, it had been a heavenly, heavenly time; something to remember joyfully all one’s days.

‘When we’re old,’ he said, the last evening, ‘how we shall think of this.’

Just as if, she thought, pressing close to him so as to hide from the thought, when he had got to the stage of being old she wouldn’t, far ahead of him, be long past thinking at all.

He had to be back at his office the end of the second week, and the last night in their abode of bliss they hardly slept at all, so loth were they to lose any minutes of what was left of their honeymoon in unconsciousness; and the effect of this was that in the morning, while Christopher was as blithe as a lark and breakfasted cheerfully and packed up with zeal, Catherine could hardly move for fatigue, and was really shocked by her leaden face when she saw it in the glass.

Luckily he noticed nothing that time; he was too busy packing up, too much pleased in the fresh morning to be doing something different, to be starting on a journey. Besides, wasn’t he going to work like a navvy now? Hadn’t he got something to work for,—responsibilities, the sweetest, most wonderful in the world? He itched to be at it, to do well, make her proud of him, earn money for her as that old George had earned money for her.

With gusto he swept his scattered things into his suit-case, whistling the love music out of The Immortal Hour as he packed, with gusto he settled the bills and tipped the woman, with gusto he walked, his arm through Catherine’s, down the path to the gate for the last time, and waved to the buttercup-field in which he would not again have to lie. He was in high spirits. It was jolly getting back to work, beginning it again in these new delicious conditions, with Catherine to speed him in the morning and welcome him back at night. Now he would have variety; now he would have work and love, absence and presence, in their right proportion.

He was very happy. It seemed incredible to him, as he fondly looked down at her when they were in the bright warm sunshine on the ferry, that he had actually attained his heart’s desire and got Catherine. Life was splendid,—packed with possibilities, a thing of the utmost magnificence. The waters of the Solent danced and sparkled; white wings flashed out of the deep blue of the sky; the sun lay hot across the back of his neck; the wind was fresh and salt in his face; the world looked as it must have looked on the morning of its first day. Old Lewes—he would go and dig out old Lewes to-morrow, and make him come and lunch in one of those jolly little restaurants where the food was good and ladies didn’t go, and yarn his head off. And on Saturday he would take Catherine down and introduce her to his uncle, who would certainly adore her, and she would wander about the garden and enjoy her darling little self while he gave the old boy the round of golf he knew he was thirsting for. So was he thirsting for it. His honeymoon had been wonderful, but a fortnight is enough. It wouldn’t of course be enough, and one would never then want it to end, if one were going to be torn from one’s beloved when it was over. But here they were, he and she, entering into the joys, the varied joys of married life, with him, the male, girding up his loins in the morning and going forth to labour until the evening, as men from time immemorial had girded themselves and gone forth, and coming back at night to his nest and his mate. And this after all was better in the long run than a honeymoon, just as real good bread and butter was better than everlasting cake.

‘I’m so happy,’ he said, slipping his arm round her and giving her a quick hug when no one was looking. He couldn’t see her face; she was sitting too close to him, besides having put on a gauze motor-veil.

‘Darling Chris,’ she murmured, smiling through her veil.

But she would have liked it better if he hadn’t been quite so exuberantly happy on that particular morning. After all, it was the finish of their honeymoon, and they would never have one again. Yet perhaps it was as well it was finished. Once at home and he at work, she would be able to sleep at least all day....

In London Mrs. Mitcham, anxious to do the right thing, had filled George’s different bits of china with white flowers, and the drawing-room with its heavy black furniture looked more like a carefully kept-up memorial than ever. She herself was very clean and spruce in her best apron, and her face was wreathed in the proper welcoming smiles, though she was in fact excessively nervous and embarrassed. She had always liked Christopher, with the indulgent liking of the elderly female servant for the irrepressible young gentleman, and she was thoroughly aware that marriage was marriage, yet she couldn’t help turning a little red when he marched into her mistress’s bedroom as if it were his. So it was his; but for years and years it hadn’t been his, and for years and years before that it not only hadn’t been his but had been poor Mr. Cumfrit’s. It was her vivid recollection of poor Mr. Cumfrit—the times she had taken him and Mrs. Cumfrit their morning tea into that very room, and they always so pleasant and content together in their double bed—that gave her this feeling of shock when she saw Christopher walking in.

Mrs. Mitcham, who was so well trained that her very thoughts were respectful, wouldn’t have dreamed of comparing Christopher to a cuckoo, but she had heard of the bird’s habits in regard to nests not originally its own, and deep down in the vast dark regions of her subconsciousness, where no training had ever set its foot and simple candour prevailed, was the recognition of the fact that her mistress was the natural prey of cuckoos,—first Stephen, turning her out of her original nest, now Christopher, taking possession of this one.

She could only hope that all would be well. What wasn’t well, plain enough for any one to see, was her mistress. Mrs. Mitcham couldn’t have believed such a change possible in that short time. ‘It’s them honeymoons,’ she said to herself, shaking her head over her saucepans. They did no good to a woman, she thought, not after a certain age. You had to be very strong to put up with them at any time. No rest. No regular hours. Never knew where you were. He looked all right, the young gentleman did, and it wasn’t for not being happy that her mistress didn’t, for already, in the quarter of an hour since they had arrived, Mrs. Mitcham had seen more love about in the flat than she could remember during the whole of poor Mr. Cumfrit’s time in it. She couldn’t help wondering what that poor gentleman would say if he could see what was happening in his flat. He wouldn’t much like it, she was afraid; but perhaps hardly anybody who was dead would much like what they would see, supposing they were able to come back and look. Even Mitcham wouldn’t. What Mitcham wouldn’t like seeing, if there was nothing else for him to grumble about, would be how well she had got on without him.

She carried the asparagus into the dining-room. Once again, as she opened the door, she felt uncomfortable. How should she have thought of knocking first? She had never had to knock at any except bedroom doors since she had been in service. Whenever she happened to go into a room everything would be just as nice and what you’d expect as possible: Mr. Cumfrit at the head of the table, taking a sip of claret, Mrs. Cumfrit on his right hand, quietly eating her toast. ‘I’ve done a good stroke of business to-day,’ Mr. Cumfrit would be saying. ‘I’m so glad, George dear,’ Mrs. Cumfrit would be answering. Things like that would be going on in the room, things you’d expect. Or, in the drawing-room, Mr. Cumfrit would be one side of the fire, Mrs. Cumfrit the other, reading out bits of the evening paper to each other. ‘Seems to me this wretched Government doesn’t know what it wants,’ Mr. Cumfrit would be saying. ‘It does seem so, doesn’t it, George dear,’ Mrs. Cumfrit would be answering, quiet and ladylike.

But this....

Impossible for Mrs. Mitcham not to start and draw back when she opened the door. She all but scattered the lovely asparagus over the carpet. She wasn’t used—and her mistress, too—she couldn’t have believed——

‘Come in, come in, Mrs. Mitcham,’ the young gentleman called out gaily, picking up his napkin which had fallen on to the floor. ‘We’re married, you know. It’s all right. You signed the certificate yourself.’

Mrs. Mitcham smiled nervously. The sauce-boat rattled in its dish as she handed it to her mistress. She wasn’t used to this sort of thing.