VII
It was the very morning after this that Stephen was late for breakfast for the first time for years, and Virginia got down before him and found a postcard in her mother’s handwriting among the letters, with a picture on it of some place in the Isle of Wight and these words: You have helped me to happiness. Catherine Monckton.
She stared at it puzzled. She was still more puzzled when, turning it over again and looking at the address, she saw it was for Stephen, not for her.
Stephen had helped her mother to happiness? It would be just like him, of course—their reconciliation the night before had been utter and wonderful—but how? What had he had to do with it? He who only now, only yesterday, had come round to not disapproving any longer of the marriage?
She was still holding the postcard in her hand, vainly trying to make head or tail of it, when he came in.
‘It seems,’ she said, going to meet him with the quick steps and the radiant smile of love that is very proud, ‘that I still don’t know all your goodness, dear husband.’
‘What is it, my own wife?’ he asked, gazing at her upturned face with the glad content of the readmitted into paradise.
‘Why, look——’ And she gave him the postcard.
He turned a deep red. She took that for modesty, and laughed with pride in him. What he could have done and why he had done it she didn’t know, but she loved him with a positively burning faith.
Stephen, reading the words on the postcard, deduced that the marriage, which he had supposed had taken place a month or six weeks before, had in fact only just done so, for he believed no lasting happiness could be the lot of the ex-Mrs. Cumfrit, and gave her and her unfortunate victim two or three days of it at most before remorse and disillusionment set in. They were evidently at the very beginning of their two or three days when the card was written. He had had no wish at all, he knew, to help his mother-in-law to happiness. Expiation only was what he had had in mind. That expiation should be a happiness-giving process had not occurred to him as possible. And here was Virginia, praising and blessing him; here was this young unsullied spirit once more making him, by her belief and pride in his goodness, feel ashamed of himself. Also, how awkward it was. Why could not Mrs. Cumfrit have announced she was now Monckton in an ordinary manner, without dragging him into it?
‘Let us, my darling,’ he said, not knowing what to say and fervently wishing he really had done something to deserve the look of proud adoration on Virginia’s face, ‘have breakfast. Otherwise it will be cold. And I am as hungry as a——’ he was going to say hunter, but it sounded too unclerical, so he said rector instead; and they both laughed, being in the mood, that happy morning, when one laughs at anything.
She brought his coffee round to him, and stood behind his chair laying her cheek on his head. ‘You’ve got to confess, you know,’ she said, ‘however much you want to hide your light under a bushel. What did you do, Stephen darling, and why have we been so miserable all this time about mother’s marrying, when it was really you who——?’
‘I’ll confess to you, my love, that I did enjoin marriage.’
‘You did? Then why——?’
‘Virginia, love, you trust your husband?’
‘Oh, Stephen—so absolutely!’ she cried, putting her arms round his neck.
‘Then if I ask you not to question me further on this matter?’ he said, stroking the hand round his neck and looking up at the face so near his own.
‘Oh Stephen—ask me something harder than that. I do so long to show what I would do for you. I do so long to be more like you——’
‘My darling, God forbid,’ said Stephen very earnestly.
‘Oh Stephen——’ was all Virginia could say to a modesty, a humility so profound. She had married not only a lover but a saint.
Her cup was full. To be asked by Stephen not to question him... she went about as dumb as a mouse. To be asked by Stephen to believe in him... she went about bursting with belief. And she was so happy, restored to her husband after the black separation, that she didn’t even any longer mind the idea of Christopher as a stepfather; and her happiness spilt over into the letter she wrote her mother asking them both to Chickover; and it was such a warm letter that Catherine, accustomed in her relations with Virginia to provide all the warmth, was as much puzzled as Virginia had been on reading the postcard to Stephen.
That Virginia, who rarely showed warmth, should show it now was really very puzzling. But, being at the moment in the first astonishment at the joy of falling in love, Catherine had no time for anything or any one but Christopher, and didn’t think about Virginia’s letter for long. She scribbled a little note—‘Thank you, darling, for your letter. We shall love to come some day’—and forgot her. Nor did she remember her again, or think of Chickover and Stephen and all that strange dim life, till the Fanshawes’ visit.
On that visit almost everything the Fanshawes said seemed to produce a climax. Their innocent questions were all, except one, very difficult to answer, and their comments could mostly only be met by silence. The one question that wasn’t difficult was, ‘Have you been to Chickover with him yet?’—for the warm, forgotten invitation came back to Catherine’s mind at these words; and though at the moment the Fanshawes hadn’t given her time to answer, afterwards, before they left, when all the naturalness and glow had gone out of their visit and everybody was elaborately making conversation, she announced that Virginia had written urging them to go down as soon as possible and stay a long while, and that they thought of soon going.
At this Christopher had made a face at her, indicative of his amazement, for it was the first he had heard of any such invitation or visit; and Mrs. Fanshawe asked, ‘Have Virginia and Mr. Monckton already met?’—a little timidly, for by this time she too felt that any question was likely to turn out to be a bombshell.
‘Oh yes,’ said Catherine, reddening again, a vision of that meeting flashing before her eyes—the Chickover drawing-room, herself coming in ready to start for London and finding three figures in it, figures stiff and silent as three hostile pokers.
Upon which the Fanshawes decided that there were things and people in life they couldn’t understand, and gave up trying to. But their bosoms were benevolent, and the only criticism they permitted themselves was that Virginia, whom they didn’t know, must be a little unusual.