XXII

That was an awful day for Stephen.

Men have found out, with terrible pangs, that their wives, whom they regarded as models of blamelessness, were secretly betraying their homes and families, but Stephen could not recall any instance of a man’s finding this out about his wife’s mother. It was not, he supposed, quite so personally awful as if it were one’s wife, but on the other hand it had a peculiar awfulness of its own. A young woman might descend declivities, impelled by the sheer momentum of youth; but for women of riper years, for the matrons, for the dowagers, for those whose calm remaining business in life is to hold aloft the lantern of example, whose pride it should be to be quiet, to be immobile, to be looked-up to and venerated–for these to indulge in conduct that disgraced their families and ruined themselves was, in a way, even more horrible. In any woman of riper years it was horrible and terrible. In this one–what it was in this one was hardly to be uttered, for she–ah, ten times horrible and terrible–was his own mother-in-law.

He preached his sermon mechanically, with no sense of what he was reading, never lifting his eyes from his manuscript. The dilapidated pair–they had looked extraordinarily dilapidated as they stood there, guilty and caught, in the unsparing light of Sunday morning–floated constantly before him, and made it impossible for him to attend to a word he was saying.

What was he to do next? How could he ever face Virginia, and answer her anxious, loving questions about her mother’s safety? It must be kept from her, the appalling, the simply unutterable truth; at all costs it must be kept from her in her present condition, or it well might kill her. He felt he must tell his mother, for he could not bear this burden alone, but no one else must ever know what he knew. It would be the first secret between him and Virginia, and what a secret!

His thoughts whirled this way and that, anywhere but where he was, while his lips read out what he had written in those days last week of innocent peace, that now seemed so far away, about Love. Love! What sins, thought Stephen, were committed in its name. Incredible as it was, almost impossible to imagine at their different ages, and shocking to every feeling of decency and propriety, the word had probably frequented the conversations of those two.

He shuddered away. There were some things one simply could not think of. And yet he did think of them; they haunted him. “We broke down,” she had said. Persons in her position always said that. He was man of the world enough to know what that meant. And then their faces–their startled, guilty faces, when they found him so unexpectedly confronting them.

“Love,” read out Stephen from his manuscript, quoting part of his text and with mechanically uplifted hand and emphasis impressing it on his congregation, “thinketh no evil….”

After the service he went straight back to Hertford Street. Useless to flinch from his duty. His first impulse that morning, and he had followed it, was to remove himself at once from contact with his mother-in-law. But he was a priest; he was her nearest living male relative; he was bound to do something.

He went straight back to Hertford Street, and found her sitting in the dining-room quietly eating mutton.

It had always seemed grievous to Stephen, and deeply to be regretted, that no traces of sin should be physically visible on the persons of the sinners, that a little washing and tidying should be enough to make them indistinguishable from those who had not sinned. Here was this one, looking much the same as usual, very like any other respectable quiet lady at her Sunday luncheon, eating mutton as though nothing had happened. At such a crisis, he felt, at such an overwhelming moment of all their lives, of his, of hers, of his dear love’s, whitely unconscious at home, whatever his mother-in-law did it ought anyhow not to have been that.

She looked up when he came in, walking in unannounced, putting Mrs. Mitcham aside when she tried to open the door for him.

“I’m glad you’ve come back, Stephen,” she said, leaning forward and pushing out the chair on her right hand for him to sit on–as though he would dream of sitting!–“I want to tell you what happened.”

He took no notice of the chair, and stood facing her at the end of the table, leaning on it with both hands, their thin knuckles white with his heavy pressure.

“Won’t you sit down?” she said.

“No.”

“Have you had lunch?”

“No.”

“Will you have some?”

“No.”

There was nothing for it, Catherine knew, but to face whatever music Stephen should make, but she did think he might have said “No, thank you.” Still, her position was very weak, so she accepted his monosyllables without comment. Besides–poor Stephen–he did look wretchedly upset; he must have had a dreadful night.

She was very sorry for him, and began to tell him what had happened, how the petrol had run out just when they were in that bare stretch of country between Salisbury and Andover–

Stephen raised his hand. “Spare me all this,” he said. “Spare me and yourself.”

“There’s nothing to spare,” said Catherine. “I assure you I don’t mind telling you what happened.”

“You should blush,” said Stephen, leaning forward on his knuckles. “You should blush.”

“Blush?” she repeated.

“Do you not know that you are fatally compromised?”

“My dear Stephen–”

He longed to forbid her to call him by that name.

“Fatally,” he said.

“My dear Stephen, don’t be ridiculous. I know it was most unfortunate that I shouldn’t get back till this morning–”

“Unfortunate!”

“But who will ever hear about it? And I couldn’t help it. You don’t suppose I liked it?”

Then, as she said the words, the remembrance of herself being kept warm in Christopher’s arms, and of him softly kissing her eyes, came back to her. Yes; she had liked that. Yes; she knew she had liked that, and been happy.

A deep red flooded her face even as she said the words, and she lowered her eyes.

Stephen saw; and any faint hope he had had that her story might be true went out. His soul seemed to drop into a pit of blackness. She was guilty. She had done something unthinkable. Virginia’s mother. It was horror to be in the same room with her.

“This thing,” he said in a low voice, his eyes wide open and blazing, as though he indeed beheld horror, “must be made good somehow. There is only one way. It is a shame, a shame to have to utter it in connection with a boy of his age and a woman of yours, but the only thing left for you to do is to marry him.”

“Marry him?”

She stared at him, her mouth open in her amazement.

“Nothing else will save you, either from man’s condemnation or God’s punishment.”

“Stephen,” she said, “are you mad?”–that he should be urging her to marry Christopher!–“Why should I do anything of the sort?”

“Why? You ask me why? Am I to suffer the uttermost shame, and be forced to put into words what you have done?”

“You are certainly mad, Stephen,” said Catherine, trying to keep her head up, but terribly handicapped, she being of so blameless a life that the least speck on it was conspicuous and looked to her enormous, by the memory of those dimly felt kisses.

If only she had trudged all night in the mud, trudged on, however much exhausted she had been, she could have faced Stephen with the proper indignation of virtue unjustly suspected; but there were those hours asleep, folded warm in Christopher’s arms, and through her sleep the consciousness of his kisses. She would probably have been very ill if she had trudged all night, but she could have held up her head and ordered Stephen out of her presence. As it was, her head wouldn’t hold up, and Stephen was as certain as if he had seen the pair in some hotel that there had been no breakdown, and his mother-in-law was lying.

Hideous, he thought; too hideous. So hideous that one couldn’t even pray about it, for to speak about such matters to God …

“I have nothing more to say,” he said slowly, his face as cold and hard as frozen rock, “except that unless you marry him you will never be allowed to see my wife again. But the disgrace of such a marriage–the disgrace–”

She stared at him, pale now.

“But Stephen–” she began.

She stared at him, across the absurd mutton, the mutton he had felt was so incongruous, gone cold and congealed on its dish. This silliness, this madness, this determination to insist on sin! She might have laughed if she had not been so angry; she might have laughed, too, if it had not been for the awkward, the mortifying memory of those kisses; she might, even so, have laughed, if he had not had the power to cut her off from Virginia. But he had the power–he, the stranger she had let in to her gates when she could so easily have been ungenerous and shut him out. Why, it wouldn’t even have been ungenerous, but merely prudent. Three years more of freedom she would have gained, of freedom from him and possession of her child, by just saying one word. And she hadn’t said it. She had let him in. And here he was with power to destroy her.

She looked at him, very pale. “It’s at least a mercy, then,” she said, her eyes full of bright tears of indignation at the injustice, the cruelty of the man she had made so happy, “that I love Christopher.”

“You love him!” repeated Stephen, appalled by the shamelessness of such a confession.

“Yes,” said Catherine. “I love him very much. He loves me so much, and I find it impossible–I find it impossible–”

Her voice faltered, but with a great effort she got it steady again, and went on, “I find it impossible not to love people who are good, if they love me.”

“You dare,” said Stephen, “to mention love? You dare to use that word in connection with this boy and yourself?”

“But would you have me marry him and not love him?”

“It is shameful,” said Stephen, beside himself at what seemed to him her ghastly effrontery, “that some one so much older should even think of love in connection with some one so much younger.”

“But what, then,” said Catherine, “about you and Virginia?”

It was the first time she had ever alluded to it. The instant she had said it she was sorry. Always she had rather be hurt than hurt, rather be insulted than insult.

He looked at her a moment, his thin face white with this last outrage. Then he turned, and went away without a word.