VIII
Christopher stared.
‘I’m to—come in?’ he stammered, bewildered.
‘Please.’
‘Oh, my darling!’ he burst out, throwing down her cloak and coming in with a rush.
But she held up her hand, exactly as if he were the traffic in Piccadilly, and remarked, so coldly that all that was left to him was once more bewilderment, ‘Not at all.’
‘Not at all?’ he could only stupidly repeat.
‘Please come into the drawing-room,’ said Catherine, walking into it herself. ‘I want to tell you something.’
‘Nothing you can tell me can ever——’
‘Yes it can,’ said Catherine.
Mrs. Mitcham appeared, following them into the room. ‘Shall I light the fire, m’m?’ she inquired. ‘It seemed warm, and Mr. Colquhoun thought——’
‘Was Mr. Colquhoun here?’
‘Yes, m’m. He’s only been gone a few minutes.’
‘What a pity,’ said Catherine.
‘What a mercy,’ said Christopher.
‘I would have liked you to meet him,’ she said. ‘No, thank you—I won’t have a fire,’ she added, turning to Mrs. Mitcham, who went away and shut the door.
‘Why? Why on earth should you want me to meet Stephen?’
‘He would so very nicely have pointed the moral of what I’m going to tell you,’ she said smiling, for she felt safe again, knowing that Virginia would bring him to his senses once and for ever.
‘Catherine, if you smile at me like that——’ he began, taking a step forward.
‘Christopher, it’s my conviction that you’re mad,’ she said, taking a step backward. ‘I never heard of a young man behaving as you do in my life before.’
‘I’d kill any other young man who did. And look here—whatever it is you want to say, let me tell you you may say what you like, and tell me what you like, and send me away as much as you like, and it’ll have no effect whatever. I love you too much. I’ll always come back, and back, however often you send me away, till at last you’ll be so tired of it that you’ll marry me.’
‘Marry you!’
‘Yes, Catherine. It’s what one does. When people love frantically——’
She looked at him aghast at his expressions.
‘But who loves frantically?’ she inquired.
‘I do. All by myself at present. But you will too, soon. You won’t be able to help it. It’s the most absolutely catching thing——’
‘Oh, my dear boy,’ she interrupted, shocked at such a picture of herself, ‘don’t talk like that. It’s really dreadful. I’ve never done anything frantically in my life.’
‘I’m going to make you.’
‘Oh—oh....’
She was scandalised. She said quickly, ‘I ought to have told you ages ago about Virginia—when first you began saying foolish things.’
‘I don’t care a hang about Virginia, whoever she may be.’
‘She’s my daughter.’
‘What do I care?’
‘She’s grown up.’
‘She must have grown very fast, then.’
‘Please don’t be silly. She’s not only grown up, she’s married. So now, perhaps, you’ll understand——’
‘George was married before, then?’ he said.
‘No. She’s my daughter. My very own. So now you’ll understand——’
‘That you’re older than I am. I knew that. I could see that.’
How unaccountable one is, thought Catherine; for when he said this she was conscious of a small stab of chagrin.
‘But you see now how much older,’ she said.
‘Much! Little! What words. I don’t know what they mean. You’re you. And you’re me as well. As though I cared for any Virginia, fifty times married. My business is only with you, and yours only with me——’
‘I haven’t got any business with you.’
‘Shut her out. Forget her——’
‘Shut out Virginia?’
‘Be just you. Be just me.’
‘Oh, you’re absolutely mad.’
‘Catherine, you’re not going to let the fact that you were born before me separate us?’
She stared at him in astonishment and dismay. Virginia as a cure had failed. It was at once excessively warming to her vanity and curiously humiliating to her sense of decency. The last twelve years of her life, since George’s death, as the widowed mother of a daughter who during them grew up, was taken out, became engaged and married, had so much accustomed her to her position as a background,—necessary, even important, but only a background for the young creature who was to have all the money directly she married with her mother’s consent or came of age,—that to be dragged out of this useful obscurity, so proper, as she had long considered, to her age, and her friends and relations had considered it so also, to be dragged out with real violence into the very front of the stage, forced to be the prima donna of the piece of whom it was suddenly passionately demanded that she should sing, shocked and humiliated her. Yet, over and through this feeling of wounded decency washed a queer warm feeling of gratified vanity. She was still, then, if taken by herself, away from Virginia, who up to three months before had always been at her side, attractive; she was still so apparently young, so outwardly young, that Christopher evidently altogether failed to visualise Virginia. It really was a feather in a woman’s cap. But then the recollection that this young man was just the right age for Virginia overwhelmed her, and she turned away with a quick flush of shame.
‘I have my pride,’ she remarked.
‘Pride! What has pride to do with love?’
‘Everything with the only sort of love I shall ever know—family love, and the affection of my child, and later on I hope of her children.’
‘Oh Catherine, don’t talk such stuff to me—such copy-book, renunciated stuff!’ he exclaimed, coming nearer.
‘You see,’ she said, ‘how much older I am than you, whatever you may choose to pretend. Why, we don’t even talk the same language. When I talk what I’m sure is sense you call it copy-book stuff. And when you talk what I know is nonsense, you’re positive it is most right and proper.’
‘So it is, because it’s natural. Yours is all convention and other people’s ideas, and what you’ve been told and not what you’ve thought for yourself, and nothing to do with a simple following of your natural instincts.’
‘My natural instincts!’
She was horrified at his supposing she had such things. At her age. The mother of Virginia.
‘Well, are you going to dare tell me you haven’t been happy with me, you haven’t liked going out with me?’
‘Yes. I did. It was queer—I oughtn’t to have.’
‘It was natural, that’s why. You were being natural then, and not thinking. It’s natural you should be loved——’
‘But not by you,’ she said quickly. ‘That’s most unnatural. The generations have to keep together. You would have to be twenty years older before it could even begin to be decent.’
‘Love isn’t decent. Love is glorious and shameless.’
She put up her hand again, warding off his words. ‘Christopher, good-bye,’ she said very firmly. ‘I can’t listen to any more foolish things. As long as you didn’t know about Virginia I could forgive them, but now that you know I simply can’t bear them. You make me ridiculous. I’m sorry. I ought to have told you at the beginning, but I couldn’t believe you wouldn’t see for yourself——’
‘What is there to see except that you are what I have always dreamed of?’
‘Oh—please. Good-bye. I’m really very sorry. But you’ll laugh over this in a year’s time—perhaps we’ll laugh over it together.’
‘Yes—when you’re my wife, and I remind you of how you tormented me.’
Her answer to that was to go towards the fireplace to ring the bell for Mrs. Mitcham to show him out. There was nothing to be done with Christopher. He was mad.
But he got to the fireplace first. ‘No,’ he said, standing in front of the bell. ‘Please. Listen to me. One moment more. I can’t go away like this. Please, Catherine—my darling, my darling—don’t send love away——’
‘Mr. Colquhoun, m’m,’ said Mrs. Mitcham opening the door; and in walked Stephen.
‘Why, Stephen,’ cried Catherine, almost running to him, so very glad was she to see him, so much gladder than she had yet been in her life, ‘I am pleased!’
‘I was here earlier in the evening,’ began Stephen—and paused on catching sight of the flaming young man in the corner by the fireplace.
‘Oh, yes—this is Mr. Monckton,’ said Catherine hastily. And to Christopher she said, ‘This is Mr. Colquhoun——’ Adding, with extreme clearness, ‘My son-in-law.’