Chapter II: Part I: I (2)

Once, before he met her, in those dark days when he was still a fool and reasoned, he had remarked to Lewes that he thought it a pity and liable to lead to disappointment that love should begin, as it apparently did begin, suddenly, at the top of emotion. There ought, he said, to be a gradual development in acquaintanceship, a steady unfolding of knowledge of each other, a preparatory and of course extremely agreeable crescendo, leading up to the august passion itself. As it was, ignorant of everything really about the woman except what she looked and sounded like, why--there you were. It was bad, finished Christopher, aloofly considering the faulty arrangements of nature, to start with infatuation, because you couldn’t possibly do anything after that but cool off.

Now, remembering this when he couldn’t sleep one night, he laughed himself to scorn for a prig and an idiot. That’s all one knew about it when one wasn’t in love oneself. Love gave one a sixth sense. It instantly apprehended. The symbol of the sweet outer aspect of the loved one was before one’s eyes; from it one was aware of her inward and spiritual grace. The beloved looked so and so; therefore she was so and so. Love knew. But, on a lower level, on the level of mere convenience, it would be better, he admitted, to have had some preliminary acquaintance. He worshipped Catherine, and they were strangers. This was awkward. It cut him off. He didn’t know what to do next.

‘<i>I must see you</i>,’ he wrote, after three evenings at <i>The Immortal Hour</i> by himself. ‘<i>When can I?</i>’

And he sent the note with some roses,--those delicate pale roses in bud that come out so exquisitely in a warm atmosphere. They reminded him of her. They too were symbols, he said to himself, symbols of what would happen to her also if only she would let him be her atmosphere, her warmth; and though these roses were very expensive--ever so much for each bud--he sent three dozen, a real bunch of them, rejoicing in the extravagance, in doing something for her that he couldn’t really afford.

She wrote back: ‘<i>But you are coming to tea on Sunday. Didn’t we say you were? Your roses are quite beautiful. Thank you so very, very much.</i>’

And when he saw the letter, her first letter, the first bit of her handwriting, by his plate at breakfast, he seized it so quickly and turned so red that Lewes was painfully clear as to who had written it. <i>Poor Chris. Cumfrit. Clutches.</i> ...

So he wasn’t to see her till the next Sunday. Well, this state of things couldn’t be allowed to go on. It was simply too starkly ridiculous. He must get on quicker next time; manage somehow to explain, to put things on their right footing. What the things were, and what the right footing was, he was far too much perturbed to consider.

Of course he had gone to St. Paul’s on the Sunday after his visit, but he had not seen her. He might as easily have hoped to find the smallest of needles in the biggest of haystacks as Catherine at that evening service, with the lights glaring in one’s eyes, and rows and rows of dark figures, all apparently exactly alike, stretching away into space.

Stephen he had seen, and also heard, and had dismissed him at once from his mind as one about whom he needn’t worry. No wonder she had laughed when he asked if she were going to marry him. Marry Stephen? Good God. The same age as she was, indeed! Why, he was old enough to be her father. Standing up in the pulpit he looked like a hawk, a dry hawk. What he said, after the first sentence, Christopher didn’t know, because of how earnestly he was still searching for Catherine; but his name, he saw on the service paper a sidesman thrust into his hand, was Colquhoun,--the Rev. Stephen Colquhoun, Rector of Chickover with Barton St. Mary, wherever that might be, and he was preaching, so Christopher gathered from the text and the first sentence, in praise of Love.

What could he know about it, thought Christopher, himself quivering with the glorious thing,--what could he know, that hawk up there, that middle-aged bone? As well might they put up some congealed spinster to explain to a congregation of mothers the emotions of parenthood. And he thought no more about Stephen. He no longer wanted him stoned. It would be waste of stones.

Of Ned that week he did sometimes think, because although Ned was manifestly a worm he was also equally manifestly a rich worm, and might as such dare to pester Catherine with his glistening attentions. But he felt too confident in Catherine’s beautiful nature to be afraid of Ned. Catherine, who loved beauty, who was so much moved by it--witness her rapt face at <i>The Immortal Hour</i>--would never listen to blandishments from anyone with Ned’s nose. Besides, Ned was elderly. In spite of the fur rug up to his chin, Christopher had seen that all right. He was an elderly, puffy man. Elderliness and love! He grinned to himself. If only the elderly could see themselves....

Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday he went to <i>The Immortal Hour</i>, and sat and wilted because she wasn’t there. Thursday morning he sent her the roses. Friday morning he got her letter, and spent several hours when he ought to have been working in assuring himself that this couldn’t go on, this being separated, this having to wait two more whole days and a half, and then perhaps call there only to find ossifications like the Fanshawes calling there too, and turgescences like Ned, and that callosity Stephen.

At lunch-time on Friday he telephoned to her, and held his breath while he waited, for fear she should be out.

No--there was her voice, her heavenly little coo. ‘Oh, my <i>darling</i>!’ he was within an ace of crying down the thing in his relief. Only just did he manage not to, and as it took him a moment to gulp the word back again she repeated with gentle inquiry--what a perfect telephone voice--‘Yes--who is it?’

‘It’s me. Chris. Look here----’

‘Who?’

‘Chris. Oh, you know. You said you’d call me Chris. Christopher, then. Monckton. Look here, I wish you’d come and dine, will you? To-night? There’s an awfully jolly little restaurant--what? You can’t? Oh, but you <i>must</i>. Why can’t you? What? I can’t hear if you laugh. You’re not going to that thing <i>again</i>? Why, what nonsense. It’s becoming an obsession. We’ll go to it to-morrow night. Why didn’t you go last night? And the night before? No--I want to talk. No--we can’t talk there. No, we <i>must</i> talk. No it isn’t--not at all the same thing. I’ll come and fetch you at half-past seven. Yes but you <i>must</i>. I think I’d better be at your place at seven. You’ll be ready, won’t you? Yes I know--but that can wait till to-morrow night. All right then--seven. I say, it’s simply frightfully ador--nice of you. Hullo--hullo--are you there? They tried to cut us off. Look here--I’d better fetch you a little before seven--say a quarter to--because the place might be crowded. And I say, look here--hullo, hullo--don’t cut us off--oh, damn.’

The last words were addressed to deafness. He hung up the receiver, and snatching at his hat went off to the restaurant, an amusing one that specialised in Spanish dishes and might, he thought, interest her, to choose and secure his table. He then went out and bought some more of the roses she said were quite beautiful, and took them to the head waiter, who was all intelligence, and instructed him to keep them carefully apart in water till a quarter to seven, when they were to be put on his table. Then he went to Wyndham Place to see if Lewes, who was working at economics and sat indoors writing most of the day, would come out and play squash with him, for he couldn’t go back to his office as if it were a day like any other day, and exercise he must have,--violent exercise, or he felt he would burst.

Lewes went. He sighed to himself as he pushed his books aside, seeing in this break-up of his afternoon a further extension of the Cumfrit clutches. Poor Chris. He was in the bliss-stage now, the merest glance at his face showed it; but--Lewes, besides being a highly promising political economist, was also attached to the poets--

Full soon his soul would have her earthly freight,
And widows lie upon him with a weight
Heavy as frost....

Alas, alas, how could he have committed such a profanity? Lewes loathed himself. The woman, of course, goading him,--Mrs. Cumfrit. And his feeling towards a woman who could lower him to parody a beautiful poem became as icily hostile as Adam’s ought to have been to Eve after she had lowered him to the eating of half the apple; instead of which the inexperienced man was weak, and let himself be inveigled into doing that which had ultimately produced himself, Chris, and Mrs. Cumfrit.

Adam and Chris, reflected Lewes, sadly going to the club where they played, and not speaking a word the whole way, were alike in this that they neither of them could do without a woman. And always, whenever there was a woman, trouble began; sooner or later trouble began. Or, if not actual trouble, what a deadly, what a disintegrating dulness.

Lewes knew from his friend’s face, from the way he walked, from the sound of his voice, and presently also from the triumphant quickness and accuracy with which he beat him at squash, that something he considered marvellous had happened to him that day. What had the widow consented to? Neither of them now ever mentioned her; and if he, Lewes, said the least thing about either women or love,--and being so deep in Donne and wanting to discuss him it was difficult not to mention these two disturbers of a man’s peace--if ever he said the least thing about them, his poor friend at once began talking, very loud and most unnaturally, on subjects such as the condition of the pavement in Wyndham Place, or the increasing number of chocolate-coloured omnibuses in the streets. Things like that. Stupid things, about which he said more stupid things. And he used to be so intelligent, so vivid-minded. It was calamitous.

‘Shall we go and dine somewhere together to-night, old man?’ he couldn’t resist suggesting, as Christopher walked back with him, more effulgent than ever after the satisfaction of his triumphant exercise, and chatting gaily on topics that neither of them cared twopence for. Just to see what he would say, Lewes asked him.

‘I can’t to-night,’ said Christopher, suddenly very short.

‘<i>The Immortal Hour</i> again, I suppose,’ ventured Lewes after a pause, trying to sound airy.

‘No,’ snapped Christopher. ‘I’m dining out.’

And Lewes, silenced, resigned, and melancholy, gave up.

V

When Christopher got to Hertford Street Catherine wasn’t ready because he was earlier than he had said he would be; but Mrs. Mitcham opened the door, wide and welcomingly this time, and looked pleased to see him and showed him at once into the drawing-room, saying her mistress would not be long.

The fire had been allowed to go out, and the room was so cold that his roses were still almost as much in bud as ever. People had been there that afternoon, he saw; the chairs were untidy, and there were cigarette ashes. Well, not one of them was taking her out to dinner. They might call, but he took her out to dinner.

Directly she came in he noticed she had a different hat on. It was a very pretty hat, much prettier than the other one. Was it possible she had put it on for him? Yet for whom else? Absorbed in the entrancingness of this thought he had the utmost difficulty in saying how do you do properly. He stared very hard, and gripped her hand very tight, and for a moment didn’t say anything. And round her shoulders was the white fox thing he had held to his face the other day; and her little shoes--well, he had better not look at them.

‘This is great fun,’ she said as he gripped her hand, and she successfully hid the agony caused by her fingers and her rings being crushed together.

‘It’s heaven,’ said Christopher.

‘No, no, that’s not nearly such fun as--just fun,’ she said, furtively rubbing her released hand and making a note in her mind not to wear rings next time her strong young friend was likely to say how do you do.

The pain had sent the blood flying up into her face. Christopher gazed at her. Surely she was blushing? Surely she was no longer so self-possessed and sure? Was it possible she was beginning to be shy? It gave him an extraordinary happiness to think so, and she, looking at him standing there with such a joyful face, couldn’t but catch and reflect some at least of his light.

She laughed. It really was fun. It made her feel so young, frolicking off like this with a great delighted boy. He was such an interesting, unusual boy, full of such violent enthusiasms. She wished he need never grow older. How charming to be as young and absurd as that, she thought, laughing up at the creature. One never noticed how delightful youth was till one’s own had finished. Well, she was going to be young for this one evening. He treated her as if she were; did he really think it? It was difficult to believe, yet still more difficult not to believe when one watched his face as he said all the things he did say. How amusing, how amusing. She had been solemn for so long, cloistered in duties for such years; and here all of a sudden was somebody behaving as if she were twenty. It made her <i>feel</i> twenty; feel, anyhow, of his own age. What fun. For one evening....

She laughed gaily. (No, he thought, she wasn’t shy. She was as secure as ever, and as sure of her little darling self. He must have dreamed that blush.) ‘Where are we going?’ she asked. ‘I haven’t been to a restaurant for ages. Though I’m not sure we wouldn’t have been happier at <i>The Immortal Hour</i>.’

‘I am,’ said Christopher. ‘Quite sure. Don’t you know we’ve got marvellous things to say to each other?’

‘I didn’t,’ she said, ‘but I daresay some may come into my head as we go along. Shall we start? Help me into my coat.’

‘What a jolly thing,’ he said, wrapping her in it with joyful care. He knew nothing about women’s clothes, but he did feel that this was wonderful--so soft, so light, and yet altogether made of fur.

‘It’s a relic,’ she said, ‘of past splendour. I used to be well off. Up to quite a little while ago. And things like this have lapped over.’

‘I want to know all about everything,’ he said.

‘I’ll tell you anything you ask,’ she answered. ‘But you must promise to like it,’ she added, smiling.

‘Why? Why shouldn’t I like it?’ he asked quickly, his face changing. ‘You’re not--you’re not going to be married?’

‘Oh--don’t be silly. There. I’m ready. Shall we go down?’

‘I suppose you insist on walking down?’

‘We can go in the lift if you like,’ she said, pausing surprised, ‘but it’s only one floor.’

‘I want to carry you.’

‘Oh--don’t be <i>silly</i>,’ she said again, this time with a faint impatience. The evening wouldn’t be at all amusing if he were going to be silly, seriously silly. And if he began already might he not grow worse? George, she remembered, used to be quite different after dinner from what he was before dinner. Always kind, after dinner he became more than kind. But he was her husband. One bore it. She had no wish for more than kindness from anybody else. Besides, whatever one might pretend for a moment, one <i>wasn’t</i> twenty, and one naturally didn’t want to be ridiculous.

She walked out of the flat thoughtfully. Perhaps she had better begin nipping his effusiveness in the bud a little harder, whenever it cropped up. She had nipped, but evidently not hard enough. Perhaps the simplest way--and indeed all his buds would be then nipped for ever at once--would be to tell him at dinner about Virginia. If seeing her as he had now done in full daylight hadn’t removed his misconceptions, being told about Virginia certainly would. Only--she hadn’t wanted to yet; she had wanted for this one evening to enjoy the queer, sweet, forgotten feeling of being young again, of being supposed to be young; which really, if one felt as young as she quite often very nearly did, amounted to the same thing.

‘You’re not angry with me?’ he said, catching her up, having been delayed on the stairs by Mrs. Mitcham who had pursued him with his forgotten coat.

She smiled. ‘No, of course not,’ she said; and for a moment she forgot his misconceptions, and patted his arm reassuringly, because he looked so anxious. ‘You’re giving me a lovely treat. We’re going to enjoy our evening thoroughly,’ she said.

‘And what are you giving <i>me</i>?’ he said--how adorable of her to pat him; and yet, and yet--if she had been shy she wouldn’t have. ‘Aren’t you giving me the happiest evening of my whole life?’

‘Oh,’ she said, shaking her head, ‘we mustn’t talk on different levels. When I say something ordinary you mustn’t answer’--she laughed--‘with a shout. If you do, the conversation will be trying.’

‘But how can I help what you call shouting when I’m with you at last, after having starved, starved----’

‘Oh,’ she interrupted quickly, putting her hands up to her ears, ‘you wouldn’t like it, would you, if I went deaf?’

He must go slower. He knew he must. But how go slower? He must hold on to himself tightly. But how? How? And in another minute they would be shut up close and alone in one of those infernal taxis.... Perhaps they had better go by tube; yet that seemed a poor way of taking a woman out to dinner. No, he couldn’t possibly do that. Better risk the taxi, and practise self-control.

‘You know,’ she said when they were in it,--fortunately it was a very fast one and would soon get there--‘only a few days ago you used to sit at <i>The Immortal Hour</i> all quiet and good, and never say anything except intelligent things about Celts. Now you don’t mention Celts, and don’t seem a bit really intelligent. What has happened to you?’

‘You have,’ he said.

‘That can’t be true,’ she reasoned, ‘for I haven’t seen you for nearly a week.’

‘That’s why,’ he said. ‘But look here, I don’t want to say things that’ll make you stop your ears up again, and I certainly shall if we don’t talk about something quite--neutral.’

‘Well, let’s. What is neutral enough?’ she smiled.

‘I don’t believe there’s anything,’ he said, thinking a moment. ‘There’s nothing that wouldn’t lead me back instantly to you. There’s nothing in the whole world that doesn’t make me think of you. Why, just the paving stones--you walked on them. Just the shop-windows--Catherine has looked into these. Just the streets--she has passed this way. Now don’t, don’t stop up your ears--please don’t. Do listen. You see, you fill the world--oh <i>don’t</i> put your fingers in your ears----’

‘I wasn’t going to,’ she said. ‘I was only just thinking that I believe I’m going to have a headache.’

‘A headache?’

‘One of my headaches.’

‘Oh no--not really?’

He was aghast.

‘You’ll be all right when you’ve had some food,’ he said. ‘Are they bad? Do you get bad ones?’

‘Perhaps if we don’t talk for a little while----’ she murmured, shutting her eyes.

He went as dumb as a fish. His evening ... it would be too awful if it were spoiled, if she had to go home....

She sat in her corner, her eyes tight shut.

He sat stiff in his, as if the least movement might shake the taxi and make her worse, stealing anxious looks at her from time to time.

She didn’t speak again, nor did he.

In this way they reached the restaurant, and as he helped her out, his alarmed eyes on her face, she smiled faintly at him and said she thought it was going to be all right. And to herself she said, ‘At dinner I’ll tell him about Virginia.’

VI

But she was weak; it was such fun; she couldn’t spoil it; not for this one evening.

There were the roses, sisters to the roses in her room, making the table a thing apart and cared for among the flock of tables decorated cynically with a sad daffodil or wrinkled tulip stuck in sprigs of box and fir; and there the welcoming head waiter, himself hovering over the proper serving of dishes which all seemed to be what she chanced to like best, and there sat Christopher opposite her, flushed with happiness and so obviously adoring that the other diners noticed it and sent frequent discreet glances of benevolent and sympathetic interest across to their corner, and nobody seemed to think his attitude was anything but natural, for she couldn’t help seeing that the glances, after dwelling benevolently on him, dwelt with equal benevolence on her. It was too funny. It wouldn’t have been human not to like it; and whatever misconception it was based on, and however certainly it was bound to end, while it lasted it was--well, amusing.

On the wall to her left was a long strip of looking-glass, and she caught sight of herself in it. No, she didn’t seem old,--not unsuitably old, even for Christopher; in fact not old at all. It was really rather surprising. When did one begin? True, the rose-coloured lights were very kindly in this restaurant, and besides, she was amused and enjoying herself, and amusement and enjoyment do for the time hide a lot of things in one’s face, she reflected. What would Stephen say if he saw her at this moment?

She looked up quickly at Christopher, the thought laughing in her eyes; but meeting his, fixed on her face in adoration, the thought changed to: What would Stephen say if he saw Christopher?--and the laughter became a little uneasy. Well, she couldn’t bother about that to-night; she would take the good the gods were providing. There was always to-morrow, and to-morrow and to-morrow to be dusty and dim in. For the next two hours she was Cinderella at the ball; and afterwards, though there would be the rags, all the rags of all the years, still she would have been at the ball.

‘What are you laughing at?’ asked Christopher, himself one large laugh of joy.

‘I was wondering what Stephen--your friend Stephen--would say if he saw us now.’

‘Poor old Jack-in-the-Box,’ said Christopher with easy irreverence. ‘I suppose he’d think us worldly.’

She leaned forward. ‘What?’ she asked, her face rippling with a mixture of laughter and dismay, ‘what was it you called him?’

‘I said poor old Jack-in-the-Box. So he is. I saw him in his box on Sunday at St. Paul’s. I went, of course. I’d go anywhere on the chance of seeing you. And there he was, poor old back number, gassing away about love. What on earth he thinks <i>he</i> knows about it----’

‘Perhaps----’ She hesitated. ‘Perhaps he knows a great deal. He has got’--she hesitated again--‘he has got a quite young wife.’

‘Has he? Then he ought to be ashamed of himself. Old bone.’

She stared at him. ‘Old what?’ she asked.

‘Bone,’ said Christopher. ‘You can’t get love out of a bone.’

‘But--but he loves her very much,’ she said.

‘Then he’s a rocky old reprobate.’

‘Oh Christopher!’ she said, helplessly.

It was the first time she had called him that, and it came out now as a cry, half of rebuke, half of horrified amusement; but in whatever form it came out the great thing to his enchanted ears was that it had got out, for from that to Chris would be an easy step.

‘Well, so he is. He shouldn’t at that age. He should pray.’

‘Oh Christopher!’ cried Catherine again. ‘But she loves him too.’

‘Then she’s a nasty girl,’ said Christopher stoutly; and after staring at him a moment she went off into a fit of laughter, and laughed in the heavenly way he had already seen her laugh once before--yes, that was over Stephen too--so it was; Stephen seemed a sure draw--with complete abandonment, till she had to pull out her handkerchief to wipe her eyes.

‘I don’t mind your crying that sort of tears,’ said Christopher benignly, ‘but I won’t have any others.’

‘Oh,’ said Catherine, trying to recover, diligently wiping her eyes, ‘oh, you’re so funny--you’ve no idea how funny----’

‘I can be funnier than that,’ said Christopher proudly, delighted that he could make her laugh.

‘Oh, don’t be--don’t be--I couldn’t bear it. I haven’t laughed like this since--I can’t remember when. Not for years, anyhow.’

‘Was George at all like his furniture?’

‘His furniture?’

‘Well, you’re not going to persuade me that that isn’t George’s, all that solemn stuff in your drawing-room. Was he like that? I mean, because if he was naturally you didn’t laugh much.’

‘Oh--poor darling,’ said Catherine quickly, leaving off laughing.

He had been tactless. He had been brutal. He wanted to throw himself at her feet. It was the champagne, of course; for in reality he had the highest opinion of George, who not only was so admirably dead but also had evidently taken great care of Catherine while he wasn’t.

‘I say, I’m most awfully sorry,’ he murmured, deeply contrite,--whatever had possessed him to drag George into their little feast? ‘And I like George most awfully. I’m sure he was a thoroughly decent chap. And he can’t help it if he’s got a bit crystallised,--in his furniture, I mean, and still hangs round----’

His voice trailed out. He was making it worse. Catherine’s face, bent over her plate, was solemn.

Christopher could have bitten out his tongue. He was amazed at his own folly. Had ever any man before, he asked himself distractedly, dragged in the deceased husband on such an occasion? No kind of husband, no kind at all, could be mentioned with profit at a little party of this nature, but a deceased one was completely fatal. At one stroke Christopher had wiped out her gaiety. Even if she hadn’t been fond of George, she was bound in decency to go solemn directly he was brought in. But she was fond of him; he was sure she was; and his own folly in digging him up at such a moment was positively fantastic. He could only suppose it must be the champagne. Impatiently he waved the waiter away who tried to give him more, and gazed at Catherine, wondering what he could say to get her to smile again.

She was looking thoughtfully at her plate. Thinking of George, of course, which was absolute waste of the precious, precious time, but entirely his own idiotic fault.

‘Don’t,’ he murmured beseechingly.

She lifted her eyes, and when she saw his expression she couldn’t help smiling a little, it was such intense, such concentrated entreaty. ‘Don’t what?’ she asked.

‘Don’t think,’ he begged. ‘Not now. Not here. Except about us.’

‘But,’ she said, ‘that’s exactly what I was doing till----’

‘I know. I’m a fool. I can’t help somehow blurting things out to you. And yet if you only knew the things I’ve by a miracle managed <i>not</i> to blurt. Why, as if I didn’t know this is no place for George----’

Again. He had done it again. He snapped his mouth to, pressing his lips tight together, and could only look at her.

‘Perhaps,’ said Catherine smiling, for really he had the exact expression of an agonisedly apologetic dog, ‘we had better talk about George and get it over. I should hate to think he was something we didn’t mention.’

‘Well, don’t talk about him much then. For after all,’ pleaded Christopher, ‘I didn’t ask <i>him</i> to dinner.’ And having said this he fell into confusion again, for he couldn’t but recognise it as tactless.

Apparently--how grateful he was--she hadn’t noticed, for her face became pensively reminiscent (imagine it, he said to himself, imagine having started her off on George when things had been going so happily!) and she said, breaking up her toast into small pieces and looking, he thought, like a cherub who should, in the autumn sunshine, contemplate a respectable and not unhappy past,--how, he wondered, did a comparison with autumn sunshine get into his head?--she said, breaking up her toast, her eyes on her plate, ‘George was very good to me.’

‘I’m sure he was,’ said Christopher. ‘<i>Any</i> man----’

‘He took immense care of me.’

‘I’m sure he did. <i>Any</i> man----’

‘While he was alive.’

‘Yes--while he was alive, of course,’ agreed Christopher; and remarked that he couldn’t very well do it while he wasn’t.

‘But that’s just what he tried to do. That’s just what he thinks--oh, poor darling, I don’t know if he’s able to think now, but it’s what he <i>did</i> think he had done.’

‘What did he think he had done?’

‘Arranged my future as carefully as he was accustomed to arrange my present. You see, he was very fond of me----’

‘<i>Any</i> man----’

‘And he was obsessed by a fear that somebody might want to’--her face, to his relief, broke into amusement again--‘might want to marry me.’

‘<i>Any</i> man----’ began Christopher again, with the utmost earnestness.

‘Oh, but listen,’ she said, making a little gesture. ‘Listen. He never thought he’d die--not for ages, anyhow. One doesn’t. So he naturally supposed that by the time he did I’d be too old for anybody to want to marry me for what’--her eyes were smiling--‘is called myself. George was rich, you see.’

‘Yes, I’ve been imagining him rich.’

‘So he thought he’d keep me happy and safe from being a prey to wicked men only wanting money, by making me poor.’

‘I see. Sincerely anxious for your good.’

‘Oh, he was, he was. He loved me devotedly.’

‘And are you poor?’

‘Very.’

‘Then why do you live in Hertford Street?’

‘Because that was his flat when he had to come up on business, and was just big enough for me, he thought. Where we really lived was in the country. It was beautiful there,--the house and everything. He left all that in his will to--to another relation, and nearly all his money of course, so as to keep it up properly, besides so as to protect me, and I got the flat, just as it is, for my life, with the rent paid out of the estate, and the use of the furniture and a little money--enough, he thought, for me by myself and one servant, but not enough to make me what he called a prey to some rascally fortune-hunter in my old age.’

She smiled as she used George’s phrase; how well she remembered his saying it, and things like it.

‘What a cautious, far-seeing man,’ remarked Christopher, his opinion of George not quite what it was.

‘He loved me very much,’ said Catherine simply.

‘Yes--and whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth,’ said Christopher. ‘As no doubt Stephen has pointed out.’

‘Well, but when George made his will, five hundred a year and no rent to pay at all and all the furniture to use, wasn’t in the least chastening for one woman by herself,’ she said.

‘Five hundred? Why, I’ve got nearly double that, and I feel as poor as a rat!’ exclaimed Christopher.

‘Yes, but when George made his will it was worth much more.’

‘Was it? Why, when did he make his will?’

And Catherine, suddenly realising that in another moment at this rate she would inevitably tumble right into Virginia, paused an instant, and then said, ‘Before he died, of course----’ and refused after that to say another word about him.

VII

Well, Christopher didn’t want her to; he was only too glad that she wouldn’t go on. He now thought of George as a narrow man, with a head shaped like a box and a long upper lip. But she had been right to bring him out and air him conversationally, once he had been thrust between them by his own incredible idiocy, and it did seem to have quieted poor old George down a bit, for he didn’t again leap up unbidden to Christopher’s tongue. His ghost was laid. The dinner proceeded without him; and they had begun it so early that, even drawn out to its utmost limit of innumerable cigarettes and the slowest of coffee-drinking and sipping of unwanted liqueurs, it couldn’t be made to last beyond nine o’clock. What can you expect if you will begin before seven, thought the head waiter, watching the gentleman’s desperate efforts to stay where he was. Impossible to take her home and be parted from her before ten. It would be dreadful enough to have to at eleven, but the sheer horribleness of ten flashed an inspiration into Christopher’s mind: they would go to <i>The Immortal Hour</i> for whatever was left of it.

So they went, and were in time for the love scene, as well as for the whole of the last act.

Now, indeed, was Christopher perfectly happy, as he sat beside Catherine in the thrice-blessed theatre where they had first met and compared the past with the present. Only a week ago they were there,--together indeed, but met as usual without his being sure they were going to meet, and he hadn’t even known where she lived. They were strangers,--discussing, as strangers would on such an occasion, the Celtic legends; and George, and Stephen, and the Hertford Street drawing-room, and even Ned in his car and the fluttering Fanshawes, now such vivid permanences in his mind, were still sleeping, as far as he was concerned, in the womb of time. Only a week ago and he had never touched her, never shaken hands, never said anything at all to her that could be considered--well, personal. Now he had said many such things; and although she had been restive over some of them, and although he knew he must proceed with such prudence as he could manage, yet please God, he told himself, he’d say many more of them before another week had passed.

There they sat together, after dining together, and there before her eyes on the stage was a lesson going on in how most beautifully to make love. He knew she always thrilled to that scene. Did she, he wondered, even vaguely take the lesson to heart? Did she at all, even dimly, think, ‘How marvellous to do that too’? Well, he would bring her steadily to this place, not leave it to chance any more, but go and fetch her and bring her to seats taken beforehand, bring her till it did get through to her consciousness that here was not only an exquisite thing to watch other people doing, but to go home and do oneself. How long would it take to get her to that stage? He felt so flaming with will, so irresistible in his determination, that he never doubted she would get there; but it might take rather a long time, he thought, glancing sideways at the little untouchable, ungetatable thing, sitting so close to him and yet so completely removed. If once she loved him, if once he could make her begin to love him, then he felt certain she would love him wonderfully, with a divine extravagance.... He would make her. He could make her. She wouldn’t be able to resist such a great flame of love as his.

When it was over she said she wanted to walk home.

‘You can’t walk, it’s too far,’ he said; and signalled to a taxi.

She took no notice of the taxi, and said they would walk part of the way, and then pick up an omnibus.

‘But you’re tired, you’re tired--you can’t,’ he implored; for what a finish to his evening, to trudge through slums and then be jolted in a public conveyance. If only it were raining, if only it weren’t such an odiously dry fine night!

‘I’m not tired,’ she said, while the merciless lights outside the theatre made her look tired to ghastliness, ‘and I want to walk through the old Bloomsbury squares. Then we can get an omnibus in Tottenham Court Road. See,’ she finished, smiling up at him, ‘how well I know the ropes of the poor.’

‘What I see is how badly you need some one to take care of you,’ he said, obliged to do what she wanted, and slouching off beside her, while she seemed to be walking very fast because she took two steps to his one.

‘Mrs. Mitcham takes the most careful care of me.’

‘Oh--Mrs. Mitcham. I mean some one with authority. The authority of love.’

There was a pause. Then Catherine said softly, ‘I’ve had such a pleasant evening, such a charming evening, and I should hate it to end up with one of my headaches.’

‘Why? Why?’ he asked, at once anxious. ‘Do you feel like that again?’

‘I do rather.’

‘Then you’ll certainly go home in a taxi,’ he said, looking round for one.

‘Oh, no--a taxi would be fatal,’ she said quickly, catching his arm as he raised it to wave to a distant rank. ‘They shake me so. I shall be all right if we walk along--quietly, not talking much.’

‘Poor little thing,’ he said looking down at her, flooded with tenderness and drawing her hand through his arm.

‘Not at all a poor little thing,’ she smiled. ‘I’ve been very happy this evening, and don’t want to end badly. So if you’ll just not talk--just walk along quietly----’

‘I insist on your taking my arm, then,’ he said.

‘I will at the crossings,’ said Catherine, who had drawn her hand out as soon as he had drawn it in.

In this way, first on their feet, and then at last, for walking in the silent streets was anyhow better than being in an omnibus and he went on and on till she was really tired, in an omnibus, and then again walking, they reached Hertford Street, and good-night had to be said in the presence of the night porter.

What an anti-climax, thought Christopher, going home thwarted, and bitterly disappointed at having been done out of his taxi-drive at the end.

‘Next time I see him,’ thought Catherine, rubbing the hand he had lately shaken, ‘I’ll have to tell him about Virginia. It isn’t fair....’

Next time she saw him was the very next day,--a fine Saturday, on which for the second time running he didn’t go down to his expectant uncle in Surrey. Instead, having telegraphed to him, he arrived at Hertford Street in a carefully chosen open taxi directly after lunch, when she would be sure to be in if she were not lunching somewhere, and picked her up, carrying her off before she had time to think of objections, to Hampton Court to look at the crocuses and have tea at the Mitre.

It was fun. The sun shone, the air was soft, spring was at every street corner piled up gorgeously in baskets, everybody seemed young and gay, everybody seemed to be going off in twos, laughing, careless, just enjoying themselves. Why shouldn’t she just enjoy herself too? For this once? The other women--she had almost said the other girls, but pulled herself up shocked--who passed on holiday bent, each with her man, lightly swept her face and Christopher’s with a sort of gay recognition of their brotherhood and sisterhood, all off together for an afternoon’s happiness, and when the taxi pulled up in a block of traffic in Kensington High Street, a flower-seller pushed some violets over the side and said, ‘Sweet violets, Miss?’ Oh, it was fun. And Christopher had brought a rug, and tucked her up with immense care, and looked so happy, so absurdly happy, that she couldn’t possibly spoil things for him.

She wouldn’t spoil things. Next time she saw him would be heaps soon enough to tell him about Virginia; and on a wet day, not on a fine spring afternoon like this. A wet day and indoors: that was the time and place to tell him. Of course if he became very silly she would tell him instantly; but as long as he wasn’t--and how could he be in an open taxi?--as long as he was just happy to be with her and take her out and walk her round among crocuses and give her tea and bring her home again tucked in as carefully as if she were some extraordinarily precious brittle treasure, why should she interfere? It was so amusing to be a treasure,--yes, and so sweet. Let her be honest with herself--it was sweet. She hadn’t been a treasure, not a real one, not the kind for whom things are done by enamoured men, for years,--indeed, not ever; for George from the first, even before he was one, had behaved like a husband. He was so much older than she was; and though his devotion was steady and lasting he had at no time been infatuated. She had been a treasure, certainly, but of the other kind, the kind that does things for somebody else. Mrs. Mitcham, on a less glorified scale, was that type of treasure. She, Catherine, on a more glorified scale, had been very like Mrs. Mitcham all her life, she thought, making other people comfortable and happy, and being rewarded by their affection and dependence.

Also, she had been comfortable and happy herself, undisturbed by desires, unruffled by yearnings. It had been a sheltered, placid life; its ways were ways of pleasantness, and its paths were peace. The years had slipped serenely away in her beautiful country home, undistinguished years, with nothing in any of them to make them stand out afterwards in her memory. The pains in them were all little pains, the worries all little worries. Friendliness, affection, devotion--these things had accompanied her steps, for she herself was so friendly, so affectionate, so devoted. Love, except in these mild minor forms, had not so much as peeped over her rose-grown walls. As for passion, when it leaped out at her suddenly from a book, or she tumbled on it lurking in music, she thrilled a moment and quivered a moment, and then immediately subsided again. Somewhere in the world people felt these things, did these things, were ruined or exalted for ever by these things; but what discomfort, what confusion, what trouble! How much better to go quietly to bed every night with George, to whom she was so much used, and wake up next morning after placid slumbers, strengthened and refreshed for----

Sometimes, but very seldom, she paused here and asked, ‘For what?’ Sometimes, but very seldom, it seemed to her as if she spent her whole life being strengthened and refreshed for an effort that never had to be made, an adventure that never happened. All those meals,--to what end was she so carefully, four times a day, nourished? ‘The machine must be stoked,’ George would say, pressing her to eat, for he believed in abundant food, ‘or it won’t work.’ More preparations for exertions that never were made. Nothing but preparations....

Sometimes, but very seldom, she thought like this; then the thought was lulled to sleep again, lapped quiet by the gentle waves of affection, devotion, dependence that encircled her. She made people happy; they made her happy in return. It was excessively simple, excessively easy. It really appeared that nothing more was needed than good nature. Not to be cross: was that the secret? As she didn’t know what it was like to feel cross, to be impelled to behave disagreeably or to want to criticise anybody, it was all very easy. Wherever she was there seemed to gather round her a most comfortable atmosphere of sunny calm. So, she sometimes but very seldom thought, do vegetables flourish in well-manured kitchen gardens.

George called her throughout his life his little comfort. He had no trouble with her, ever. His gratitude for this increased as he grew busier and richer and had to be more and more away from home. To think of his Catherine, safe and contented, waiting affectionately down in the country for his return, looking forward, thinking of him, depending on him for all her comforts as he depended on her for all his joy, filled him with a satisfaction that never grew stale. His only fear was lest she should marry disastrously after he was dead. He was so much older. It was bad to be so much older, and in all likelihood have to die and leave her. He did what he could to save her by a most carefully-thought-out will; and when the horrid moment arrived and he was forced to go, at least he knew his wing would still, in a way, stretch protectingly over her little head, that he had made her safe from predatory fortune-hunters by making her poor. The last thing he did, the very last thing, was solemnly to bless and thank her; and then with extremest reluctance, for it was a miserable thing to have to do, George died.

But she didn’t think much about him that afternoon at Hampton Court. He belonged to so long ago by now--ten years since his death; and Christopher was careful not to say anything this time that might set her off in widow-reveries. Nothing here reminded her of George. They had never been here together. He had never in his life taken her off like this, for an unpremeditated excursion, in a taxi, to tea at an inn. Of course he hadn’t. He was her husband. Husbands didn’t. Why should they? When she and George had wanted airing, they had gone out in their car; when they had wanted tea, they had had it in their drawing-room; when, and if, they had wanted crocuses, they had admired them either from the window or from the safe dryness of a gravel path.

How old she had been then compared to now! She laughed up at Christopher, who was leading her very fast by the elbow along wet paths shining in the sun, where the earth and grass smelt so good after London, out to lawns flung over with their little lovely coat of spring, their blue and gold and purple embroidered coat; and he laughed back at her, not asking why she laughed, nor knowing why he laughed, except that this was bliss.

The times that Christopher on this occasion managed not to seize her in his arms and tell her how frantically he loved her were not to be counted. He began counting them, but had to leave off, there were so many. His self-control amazed him. True he was terrified of offending her, but his terror was as nothing compared to his love. The wind on the drive down had whipped colour into her face, and though her eyes, her dear beautiful grey eyes, homes of kindness and reassurance, still had that pathetic tiredness, she looked gayer and fresher than he had yet seen her. She laughed, she talked, she was delighted with all she saw, she was evidently happy,--happy with him, happy to spend an afternoon alone with him.

They had the cheerfullest tea in a window of the Mitre, and compared to them the other people at the other tables were solemn and bored. Not that they saw any other people; at least Christopher didn’t, for he saw only Catherine, and he ate watercress and jam and radishes and rock-cakes quite unconsciously, drinking in every word she said, laughing, applauding, lost in wonder at what seemed to him evidences of a most unusual and distinguished intelligence. Once he thought of Lewes, no doubt at that moment with his long nose in his books, and how for hours he would prose on, insisting on the essential uninterestingness and unimportance of a woman’s mind. Fool; ignorant fool. He should hear Catherine. And even when she said quite ordinary things, things which in other people would be completely ordinary, the way she said them, the soft turned-upness of her voice at the ends of her sentences, the sweet effect as of the cooing of doves he had noticed the first day, made them sound infinitely more important and arresting than anything that idiotic Lewes, churning out his brain stuff by the yard, could ever say. <i>Male and female created He them</i>, thought Christopher, gazing at her, entranced by the satisfaction, the comfort, the sense of being completed, her presence gave him. Admirable arrangement of an all-wise Providence, this making people in pairs. To have found one’s other half, to be with her after the sterile loneliness with Lewes and the aridity of his own sketchy and wholly hateful previous adventures in so-called love, was like coming home.

‘You’re such a little <i>comfort</i>,’ he said, suddenly leaning across the table and laying his hand on hers.

And she stared at him at this with such startled eyes and turned so very red that he not only took his hand away again instantly but begged her pardon.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said, turning red in his turn. ‘I didn’t mean to do that.’

He mustn’t even touch her hand. How was he going to manage? He wasn’t going to. He couldn’t. He loved her too much. He must get things on a satisfactory basis. He must propose to her.

He proposed that evening.

Not in the taxi, because it was open, it rattled, and there were tram-lines. Also she had gone pensive again, and it frightened him to see how easily she took fright. If her gaiety had been ruffled aside by that one brief touch of her hand at tea, what mightn’t happen if he proposed? Suppose she sent him away and wouldn’t ever see him again? Then he would die; he knew he would. He couldn’t risk such a sentence. He would wait; he would manage; he would continue to exercise his wonderful self-control.

But he wasn’t able to after all.

When they got to Hertford Street he reminded her that she had said she would go with him that evening to <i>The Immortal Hour</i>, and Catherine, sobered by having heard herself once more called by George’s pet name, as if George from his grave were using this young man as a trumpet through which to blow her a warning of the perils of her behaviour, thanked him in a subdued and rather conscience-stricken voice, and said she was too tired to go out again.

Christopher’s face fell to a length that was grotesque. ‘But I’ve been counting on it!’ he cried. ‘And you said----’

‘Well, but this afternoon was instead. And how lovely it was. I think for a change even more lovely than <i>The Immortal Hour</i>. Those crocuses with the sun slanting through them----’

‘Never mind the crocuses,’ interrupted Christopher. ‘Do you mean to say I’m not going to see you again to-night?’

‘Oh, aren’t you a baby,’ she said, unable not to laugh at his face of despair.

He was walking up the stairs to her flat beside her, her wrap on his arm. He had refused to give it to her downstairs, because as long as he held on to that he couldn’t, he judged, be sent away.

‘Don’t laugh at me,’ he said. ‘It isn’t a bit funny to be separated from you.’

Her face was instantly grave again. ‘I couldn’t go anywhere to-night,’ she said, taking out her latchkey, ‘because I’m beginning to have one of my headaches.’

‘And I’m beginning to think,’ he said quickly, ‘that those headaches are things you get directly I say anything a little--anything the least approaching what I feel. Look here, I’ll do that,’ he went on, taking the key from her and opening the door. ‘Isn’t it true, now, about the headaches?’

He was becoming unmanageable. She must apply severity. So she held out her hand, the door being opened, and said good-bye. ‘Thank you so very much,’ she said with immense politeness. ‘It has been delicious. You were too kind to think of it. Thank you a thousand times.’

‘Oh, what an absurd way to talk!’ exclaimed Christopher, brushing away such stuff with a gesture of scornful impatience. ‘As if we were strangers--as if we were mere smirking acquaintances!’

‘I have a great opinion,’ said Catherine, becoming very dignified, ‘of politeness.’

‘And I haven’t. It is a thing you put on as you’re putting it on now to keep me off, to freeze me--as if you’d ever be able to freeze <i>me</i> when I’m anywhere near you!’

‘Good-bye,’ said Catherine at this, very cool indeed.

‘No,’ said Christopher. ‘Don’t send me away. It’s so early. It isn’t seven yet. Think of all the hours till I see you again.’