IX
The manner of Christopher’s departure was not creditable. He shouldn’t behave like that, thought Catherine, whatever his feelings might be. He pretended not to be aware of Stephen’s outstretched hand, scowled at him in silence, and then immediately said good-bye to her; and as he crushed her fingers—she hadn’t time to pull off her rings—he said out loud, ‘The generations don’t do what they should, you see, after all.’
‘I have no idea what you mean,’ she said coldly.
‘Just now you laid down as a principle that they should keep together.’ And he glanced at Stephen.
Stephen and Virginia. Yes; but how absurd of him to compare—
‘That’s different,’ she said quickly and defiantly.
‘Is it?’ he said; and he was gone, and twilight seemed suddenly to come into the room.
‘What a very odd young man,’ remarked her son-in-law, after a pause during which they both stood staring at the shut door as if it might burst open again, and again let in a flood of something molten. ‘What did he mean about the generations?’
‘I don’t think he knows himself,’ she said.
‘Perhaps not. Perhaps not,’ said Stephen with that thoughtfulness which never forsook him. ‘At his age they frequently do not.’
She shivered a little, and rang the bell for Mrs. Mitcham to light the fire. Stephen looked so old and dry, as if he needed warming, and she too felt as though the evening had grown cold.
But how nice it was to sit quietly with Stephen, the virtuous and the calm. So nice. So what one was used to. She hadn’t half appreciated him. He was like some quiet pond, with heaven reflected on his excellent bosom. She liked to sit by him after the raging billows of Christopher; it was peaceful, secure. What a great thing peace was, and the company of a person of one’s own age. But he did look very old, she thought. He was tiring himself out with all the improvements on the estate he and Virginia were at work on, besides preaching a series of Lenten sermons in different London churches, which obliged him to come up for the week-ends, leaving Virginia, who was not travelling just now, down at Chickover Manor with the curate to officiate on the Sundays.
‘You are tired, Stephen,’ said Catherine gently.
‘No,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘No.’
How peaceful were these monosyllables; how soothing, after the turbulent speech of that demented young man.
‘Virginia is well?’
‘Quite well. That is, as well as one can expect.’
‘She must take care of herself.’
‘She does. I was to give you her love.’
‘Darling Virginia. I hope you are dining with me to-night?’
‘Thank you—I should like to, if I may. Did you say that young fellow’s name was Monckton?’
‘Yes.’
‘Do I know him? Or, I should perhaps say, do I know anything about him?’
‘I don’t think so.’
Stephen sat thoughtful, looking at the fire.
‘A little overwhelming, is he not?’ he said presently.
‘He is young.’
‘Ah.’
He paused again; reflecting, his thin cheek leaning on his hand, that to be young was not necessarily to be overwhelming. Virginia, the youngest of the young—what inexhaustible, proud delight her youth gave him!—was not at all overwhelming.
But Christopher did not really interest him. The world was full of young men—all, to Stephen, very much alike, all with spirits that had to be blown off. The Chickover ones, his own parishioners, blew theirs off on Saturday afternoons at football or cricket according to the time of year, and the rest of the week it was to be presumed that work quieted them. Of whatever class, they seemed to Stephen noisy and restless, and the one he had just seen reminded him of a lighted torch, flaring away unpleasantly among the sober blacks and greys of the late Mr. Cumfrit’s furniture.
But he was not really interested. ‘I preach to-morrow at St. Clement’s,’ he remarked after a silence.
‘On the same subject?’
‘There is only one. It embraces every other.’
‘Yes—Love,’ she said; and her voice at the word went very soft.
‘Yes—Love,’ he repeated, still thoughtfully gazing at the fire, his cheek on his hand.
His subject on these Lenten Sundays was Love. After having preached not particularly well all his life on other subjects, since his marriage he had begun to preach remarkably well on this one. He knew what he was talking about. He loved Virginia, and had only been married to her three months, and his warm knowledge of love in particular burned in a real eloquence on Love in general. He loved and was loved. The marriage about which Catherine had had misgivings, because she thought him a little too wooden—what mistakes one makes—for a girl so young, had been completely successful. They adored each other in the quiet, becoming way a clergyman and his wife, when they adore, do adore; that is, not wantonly at all, in public, but nicely, in the fear of God. And both were determined to use Virginia’s money only for ends that were noble and good.
Virginia was like her father—made for quiet domestic bliss. Also she had never been very pretty, and that too was suitable. The Church has no use, Stephen knew, for beauty. A beautiful woman married to a clergyman easily produces complications; for we are but weak creatures, and our footsteps, even if we are a bishop, sometimes go astray. But she was quite pretty enough, with lovely eyes, and was so entrancingly young, besides being such a good little girl, and rich.
Stephen, who was first the curate and then the rector of Chickover, having been presented to the living by George Cumfrit its patron, who liked him, had had his thoughtful eye on Virginia from the beginning. When he went there she was five and he was thirty-four. Dear little child; he played with her. Presently she was fifteen, and he was forty-four. Sweet little maid; he prepared her for confirmation. Again presently she was eighteen, and he was forty-seven. Touching young bud of womanhood; he proposed to her. Catherine hesitated, for Virginia was so very young, while Stephen compared to her was so very old; and Stephen explained that age, difference in age, had nothing to do with love. Love loved, Stephen pointed out, and there was an end of it. No objections in face of that great fact could be valid, he said. Seeing that Virginia returned his love, whatever were their respective ages it surely had nothing to do with anybody except themselves. Should Mrs. Cumfrit think fit to refuse her consent she would merely be depriving her daughter of three years’ happiness, for they would certainly marry directly Virginia was of age.
Thus, before young men had had time to become aware of Virginia, Stephen had carried her off. She wasn’t nineteen when he married her. He loved her with the excessive love of a middle-aged man for a very young girl, though of course decorously in public. She, having been trained to it from childhood by him, thought there was no one in the world like him. He was to her most great, most brilliant, most good. She worshipped him. Never was a girl so proud and happy as she was when Stephen married her. Their loves, however, were private. No one was offended by demonstrations. His mother-in-law, who was of his own age, or even slightly younger,—one year younger, to be exact—wasn’t made to feel uncomfortable. Indeed, he had too high an opinion of his mother-in-law not to wish in every way to please her. She had behaved admirably. With the whole of the income of George Cumfrit’s fortune at her disposal till Virginia was either twenty-one or married with her consent under that age, and able, merely by refusing her consent, to continue in its enjoyment for another three years, she had relinquished everything with perfect grace the moment he had convinced her that it was for her daughter’s happiness. Stephen could not but consider himself the most fortunate of men. Here, by simply resisting the desire to marry—and he was a man naturally disposed to marriage—until Virginia had grown up, he had secured a delightful young wife with money enough to carry out all his most ardent dreams of benevolence, and a really remarkable mother-in-law. Indeed, his mother-in-law was exactly what the mother-in-law of a clergyman should be: a modest, unassuming, non-interfering, kind, contented Christian gentlewoman. Great had been his satisfaction when he discovered she was contented. The drop from the Cumfrit thousands and Chickover to £500 a year and a small London flat was big enough to unsettle most women. His mother-in-law dropped without a murmur. She was not in the least unsettled. She remained as kind as ever. She made no demands at all, either on Virginia or himself. When they invited her, she went, but not otherwise. When he came to see her, she welcomed him with the same pleasant friendliness. A kind, quiet woman, who didn’t mind being poor. St. Paul would have liked her.
He and she presently had the mild meal she spoke of as dinner in George Cumfrit’s little pied-à-terre dining-room—the most excellent of men, poor George Cumfrit, ripe in foresight and wisdom—and Stephen invoked God’s blessing on two cups not quite full of broth, and some scrambled eggs.
Catherine walked delicately among words with Stephen, and in his presence called that dinner which to Mrs. Mitcham she called supper, or, even more simply, something to eat, in order that Stephen, now so splendidly established in what used to be her shoes, should not be made in any way to feel the difference his marriage had made in her circumstances; while Stephen for his part always went out of his way to praise the quality and abundance of whatever food she gave him, lest she should perhaps notice that she did not now have particularly much to eat. Enough, of course; enough, and most wholesome—heavy meals at night were a mistake. And once, when he had happened to come in when there was only a milk pudding, he had behaved to it as ceremoniously and as reverently as he would have behaved to ducks and green peas, of which he was particularly fond, and said grace over it, and, as it were, carved it—she liked him to preside—with all the air of pleased anticipation of a man rubbing his hands before a banquet. Catherine had been much concerned at his chancing to come in on a milk-pudding night, and had explained, what was true, that she had not been well, and the pudding was in the nature of a sanitary precaution; and Stephen had assured her that a good rice pudding, properly made, was one of the very best of God’s gifts.
There they sat, then, on this evening of her excursion to Hampton Court, quietly eating their scrambled eggs and talking of calm things. It was strange to her to remember that such a few hours earlier she had been an ostensibly young woman out for the afternoon with her adorer, moving swiftly, laughing gaily, petted, cherished, of infinite importance. How unsuitable, how unsuitable, thought Catherine, flushing hotly—‘Yes, Stephen? Old Mrs. Dymock——?’
‘She is dead at last.’
‘Poor old thing.’
‘A blessed release.’
It had been all wrong, of course. It was merest make-believe. These were the sober facts of life; this was really where she belonged—‘Did you say young Andrews? His leg?’
‘Broken playing football.’
‘Poor boy. I am very sorry.’
‘It is his own fault. A rough customer, a very rough customer.’
Now she had entered again into her dim kingdom, in which she negatively reigned as Stephen’s mother-in-law. He was well disposed towards her she knew, and so was she towards him; but she also knew they were not interesting to each other except in their quality of satisfactory son-in-law, satisfactory mother-in-law. She wasn’t to Stephen a woman; Stephen was not to her a man—‘But do I remember Daisy? I don’t seem——’
‘She is my mother’s housemaid at the Rectory. She is marrying the cowman up at Tovey’s farm.’
‘Your mother will miss her.’
‘That is what I fear.’
Virginia had assured her, on becoming engaged, that he was of a distinguished mind; she knew for herself, since he had begun so unexpectedly to preach eloquently on love, that he had a tender and understanding heart; but neither of these things came to the surface and lit up his conversation when he was with her. Strange dehumanisation of a human being produced by their relationship....
‘Bathrooms did you say?’
‘In every cottage. And the new cottages are going to have lavatory basins in each bedroom.’
‘But that is really splendid.’
‘It is my idea, and also Virginia’s, of true religion: Love and Cleanliness. They go hand in hand. Give the poor the opportunity of washing—easy washing—there must be no difficulty about it of any sort, or they won’t—and they will begin to respect themselves. And from a decent self-respect to a decent courting of a decent girl is but one step.’
She did feel, however, that George’s will was calculated to make any son-in-law a little awkward and uncomfortable when with her, and was very sorry for Stephen. He would of course get used to it soon, but he had only had three months as yet of Chickover Manor, so tremendously associated in his eyes, who had lived next door for fourteen years, with her as its mistress, and she did her best to make him understand by every sort of friendliness that she was perfectly content. Why, she was content already; and as soon as she had had time to turn round, and was really settled in her new life, and knew exactly what she could do with her income and what she couldn’t, she suspected she was going to be happier than she had ever been. Because, for the first time, she was free; and just to be able to do things such as go to The Immortal Hour as often as she wanted to—George hadn’t cared for music—and see what friends she liked—George had been happiest when he had her to himself—and read as much as she felt inclined—George loved her to listen to him, and nobody can both listen and read—was already most agreeable, and would go on, as her life developed, becoming more and more so. Only she mustn’t, of course, behave like a fool. She had behaved very like a fool, she was afraid, in letting Christopher become so intimate, and it was her fault that he had dared be so familiar. Yet who could have dreamed, who could possibly have imagined.... Still, there it was.
Again she flushed hotly, wondering what Stephen, tranquilly eating eggs, would say if he knew.
But even if he had been looking at her, his mother-in-law might have flushed the vividest red and he wouldn’t have seen it, because it is not what one expects of mothers-in-law. They are not women, of like emotions to oneself, they are institutions. And if she to him seemed like an institution, he to her seemed oddly like a public building. A museum; a temple; a great, cool place through whose echoing emptiness one wandered. On a hot day, what a relief. These last days for Catherine had been hot—hot, and disturbing; and she did find it refreshing to sit like this among Stephen’s shadows. Presently her thoughts faded dim and quiet. Christopher’s image faded dim and quiet. Presently in the accustomed atmosphere—George’s atmosphere too had been a quiet one—she paled down till she matched it. By the end of the meal she was like a mouse, a grey mouse the colour of her surroundings, sitting unassumingly nibbling its food.
‘For these and all Thy blessings——’ said Stephen, towering tall and lean over the empty egg-dish, his eyes closed, his hands folded, his voice sounding as if it came out of somewhere hollow.
‘Amen,’ murmured Catherine with propriety.
Yes—it was soothing; it was what one knew.
And the evening in the drawing-room continued to soothe. He sat in what had been George’s chair on one side of the small fire, and she sat on the big sofa facing him. So had she and George sat when she had come up from Chickover to go out with him to some unavoidable festivity. If George could, he avoided festivities; and she, born with that spirit of adaptability which made her so pleasant to live with, born with that fortunate and convenient disposition which squeezed its happiness out of acquiescences, out of what she had, rather than waiting to be happy when she should have got something else, had gladly shared in his desire to avoid them. But if they were not avoidable, then she cheerfully came up to London and supported him; and afterwards, when whatever it was they had been to was over, with what a sigh of satisfaction did George sink into his chair before going to bed and rest his eyes on his Catherine sitting opposite him. He didn’t even like her to take up the evening paper and glance at the headlines, so much did he love to have her whole attention. Never did any one listen as sweetly as his Catherine. It was the best conversation he ever had, George considered, this talk to Catherine who so sweetly listened. Now she sat opposite Stephen, and Stephen gazed at the fire and hardly spoke, so that even her talent for listening was able to rest. Peace, perfect peace, she thought, her head in the cushions and her eyes inclined to shut.
At nine o’clock Stephen looked at his watch. He had been prepared to take it out, look at it, exclaim that time had flown, get up, and go.
But time had not flown. Both of them had been supposing it must be ten o’clock—at least ten, probably much later; so that when he saw it was only nine he was disconcerted as well as astonished.
He didn’t quite know what to do. To leave so early would not be respectful, he felt, to his excellent mother-in-law; to hold his watch up to his ear in order to make sure it hadn’t stopped—it must have stopped—was an impulse he resisted as discourteous. Yet he wanted to go away. Whatever his watch declared, he felt it was long past bedtime.
‘Would you like me,’ he suggested, fidgeting in his chair a little, ‘to say prayers for you and your household before I go?’
‘Very much,’ said Catherine politely, waking up; she was the last person to baulk any clergyman who should want to pray. ‘Only there isn’t——’
She hesitated, anxious not to seem to complain. She had been going to say there wasn’t any household; instead, she inquired whether she should call Mrs. Mitcham.
‘Pray do,’ said Stephen.
Mrs. Mitcham came.
Then it appeared there wasn’t a prayer-book. The prayer-books, both hers and Mrs. Mitcham’s—it was most unfortunate—had been left behind at Chickover.
Stephen stood thoughtfully on the hearth-rug. Mrs. Mitcham, with the expression of one already in church, waited with decent folded hands for whatever of unction should descend on her. Catherine reflected that she hadn’t left her furs behind at Chickover, nor her trinkets, and wondered whether perhaps Stephen might be reflecting this too and drawing his conclusions.
But Stephen was not. He was merely turning over in his mind what, cut off from the assistance of the prayer-book, he should say to these two women as a good-night benediction, and so with grace be able to go back to his lodging to bed.
The thought of that bed, all solitary and cold, recalled Virginia, and with her his great discovery of Love. He suddenly raised his hands over his mother-in-law and her servant—instinctively they bowed their heads—and with complete simplicity and earnestness bade them love one another.
‘Little children, love one another,’ Stephen said simply.
It was the best he could do for them, he felt; it was the best that could be done for any one in the world. Then, abruptly, he wished Catherine good-night.
‘Do you come to St. Clement’s to-morrow evening?’ he inquired of her.
‘I will certainly come,’ she said.
Mrs. Mitcham helped him into his coat with reverence. She liked having texts said over her; it gave her a peculiar, pleasant feeling in her chest. She couldn’t imagine how she had come to forget her prayer-book and not even notice she hadn’t got it. It must have been the confusion of Miss Virginia’s wedding, and moving up to London and settling in. She wrote that very evening to the housekeeper at Chickover, and begged her to send it to her, and also her mistress’s, at once.