IV

That evening, sentimentally, they went to The Immortal Hour. In this very place, only two months back, they had been sitting apart hardly aware of each other, hardly more than looking at each other out of the corners of their eyes.

“Do you remember the night I first moved up next to you?” Christopher whispered.

“Don’t I,” she murmured.

“Oh, Catherine–isn’t it wonderful to think we’re married!” he whispered.

“Sh-sh,” hissed the audience, still sparse and still ferocious.

She was in bliss again. He loved her so. He had been so utterly charming in Hertford Street, boyishly delighted with everything, filling the dull little flat with youth, and all that youth trails with it of clouds of glory–laughter, happiness, radiant confidence. Amazing to have this there after George, after the quiet years since George.

By the evening she was tired, horribly tired, and knew she looked like a ghost; but she didn’t mind as long as it was dark and he couldn’t see her silly white face and smudged, haggard eyes. There was only one interval, and her hat would hide her then. The Immortal Hour was such a nice dark opera: pitch dark for ages in the first act–so restful, so soothing.

She went sound asleep, her head against his arm. He didn’t know she was asleep, and was thinking all the time of how they were both thinking and feeling the same things exactly, he and she who owed each other to the for-ever-to-be-adored Immortal Hour.

“Darling, darling,” he murmured, stooping and trying to kiss her at the darkest moment. This bliss of unity with the perfect love, this end of loneliness, this enveloping joy….

She slept profoundly.

However, she woke when the curtain went down before the second part of the act, and those of the audience who were new to it clapped in spite of the music going on, and those who weren’t new indignantly hissed at them, and sat up and pulled her hat straight. It was the same funny little extinguishing hat she used to wear at the beginning; he had specially asked her to put it on.

“Yes, we must be proper now,” said Christopher, smiling at her.

“Sh-sh,” hissed the outraged audience.

How familiar it all was; how happy they were. She was glad he didn’t know she had been asleep. It was awful to have gone to sleep on such an occasion, but then she was so appallingly tired. Never in her life had she been tired like this. Ah, here was the love scene beginning … she wouldn’t go to sleep now. …

Her hand slid into his; his shut tight over it; they sat close, close, thrilled by memories, by all that the music meant to them; and in the most beautiful part Catherine felt her thrills grow fainter and fade away and go out, and again her head drooped against his shoulder and again she went sound asleep.

“Oh, I love you, love you,” whispered Christopher, putting his arm round her, sure her drooping head was the gesture of abandonment to irresistible emotion.

“Sh-sh,” hissed the audience.

Afterwards he wanted to take her somewhere to supper.

“Supper?” echoed Catherine faintly, who was dying with fatigue.

“Yes. We must celebrate–drink the health of our home-coming,” said Christopher, drawing her hand through his arm and proudly walking her off to a taxi. His wife. Marvellous. No more slipping away in the crowd and escaping him now, thank you. “Let’s go somewhere where we can dance. I shall blow up if I don’t let off steam somehow.”

“Dance?” echoed Catherine again, still more faintly, as she was swept up into the taxi.

“Do you realise we’ve never danced together once yet?”

“But we can’t go anywhere like that in these clothes.”

That was true. He hadn’t thought of that. Well then, they would dress properly the next night and go and dance and dance.

Catherine sat back in the seat. Dance? She hadn’t danced for years, not since before her marriage with George–never since.

She told Christopher this, and he only laughed and said it was high time she did dance; he adored dancing; he longed to dance with her; they would often go.

“Oh, Christopher,” said Catherine, sliding close up to him, “the best thing of all will be being alone together at home, you and I, in your precious evenings. Won’t we go there now? Do we really want supper?”

“Tired, darling?” he asked, instantly anxious, stooping to look under her hat.

“Oh no–not a bit. Not in the least. Really not,” said Catherine quickly. “But–our first evening–it’s so lovely at home–”

He hung out of the window and redirected the driver. “Yes. Of course,” he said, taking her in his arms. “That’s far and away the best of all–”

And they began to whisper.

Next day he went back to work. When he left at ten o’clock Catherine was still in bed.

“Do you mind my not being at breakfast?” she had asked him when Mrs. Mitcham very gingerly beat, or, more accurately, delicately patted the gong.

Mrs. Mitcham had had some moments of painful indecision before doing anything with the gong. It was altogether a most awkward morning for her. She had never yet been placed in such a position. Husband and wife, of course, and all that–she knew all that; but still it did feel awkward, and she had a queer reluctance to rousing them–almost as if they were dangerous, as well as embarrassing, to have loose about the flat. Yet it was breakfast time. Orders were for nine sharp. She did finally get herself to the gong and timidly tapped it, divided between duty and her odd reluctance to see her mistress and the young gentleman come out of that room, to have to face them….

“Stay there, my darling love,” said Christopher, smoothing the pillows and tucking Catherine up as tenderly as if she were a baby. “I’ll bring you your breakfast.”

“I–never do get up to breakfast,” she said, after a moment’s hesitation, smiling at him as he bent over her–she, who had not once during the whole of George’s time missed being down on the stroke of half-past eight to pour out his coffee for him and kiss him good-bye on the door-mat. “Good-bye, little woman,” George used to say, waving to her before the lift engulfed him. In those days good husbands of good wives frequently called them little women.

Here now was her chance. She would establish a custom that might save her. And if she never had got up to breakfast it wouldn’t worry Christopher that she never did, and he wouldn’t, frowning with concerned perplexity, ask her searching questions as to being not well. So, by sleeping on into the mornings after he had gone to work, she might catch up with rest and dodge those horrid furrows exhaustion was dragging down her face.

So the habit was started, and Mrs. Mitcham learnt not to expect to see her till lunch-time. Sometimes she even slept later, and once or twice stayed in bed all day, not getting up till just in time to dress for dinner. This, however, only happened during the first two or three weeks. As time went on Mrs. Mitcham began to be able to count on her mistress’s having her bath at twelve o’clock and being ready by one.

Mrs. Mitcham was all for her resting and taking care of herself, for she was much attached to Catherine, but she couldn’t help feeling–she didn’t permit herself to think it, but she couldn’t help feeling–that there was something unbecoming in this turning of day into night. There was plenty of night, Mrs. Mitcham thought, for those who chose to take it, but of course if–

Mrs. Mitcham, folding up her mistress’s garments, shook her head. And the garments too–she shook her head at them. Such things had not hitherto been part of Mrs. Cumfrit’s outfit. Good things she had had, as good of their kind as one would wish to see–lawn, silk, fine embroideries–but never what Mrs. Mitcham called flimsies. These were flimsy, and not only flimsy but transparent. Every time Mrs. Mitcham saw them she was shocked afresh. She couldn’t get used to them. Mrs. Cumfrit–she corrected herself, and said Mrs. Monckton–had gone out and bought them the first afternoon of her return from the Isle of Wight; and she so careful about coals, and turning the electric light out. There were six nightgowns that you could pull through a wedding-ring, they went so into nothing. Chiffon nightgowns. Different colours. Pink, lemon-colour, and so on; and all of them you could see through as plain as daylight. It was a mercy, thought Mrs. Mitcham, that it was dark at night. She, who prided herself on Catherine and had always thought her the ideal of what a lady should be, was much perturbed by these nightgowns. And the bathroom too–such a litter there now of scented dusting powder, and scented crystals, and flagons of coloured liquid that smelt good but improper, thought Mrs. Mitcham, furtively sniffing; what would poor Mr. Cumfrit say to his bathroom now, he who had never had a thing in it but a big sponge and a piece of Pears’ soap?

It was after the visit of the Fanshawes that Mrs. Mitcham first found a lip-stick on Catherine’s dressing-table. She was immensely upset. No lady she had had to do with had ever had such a thing on her dressing-table. Powder was different, because one needed powder sometimes for other things besides one’s face, and also one powdered babies, and they, poor lambs, couldn’t be suspected of wanting to appear different from what God had made them. But a lip-stick! Red stuff. What actresses put on, and those who were no better than they should be. Her mistress and a lip-stick–what would Miss Virginia say?

The Fanshawes, who were the immediate cause of the buying of the lip-stick, came to tea the second Sunday after the end of the honeymoon–Ned, his mother and sister. They had been extraordinarily taken aback by Catherine’s appearance. The flat rang with their exclamations and laments. Catherine, who had been looking sixteen when they last saw her, Catherine the bright-eyed, the quick of movement, Catherine with her lovely skin and unruffled brow–they couldn’t get over it.

Christopher had gone for a walk in the Park after lunch, straining at his leash, angry at being kept in London this beautiful afternoon because the Fanshawes insisted on coming and thrusting their inquisitive noses where they weren’t wanted, and he hadn’t got back when they arrived, so that Catherine had them to herself at first.

“Damn those women,” he had remarked when, after persistent telephoning and letters and impassioned inquiries as to what had happened to her and when they might come and see her, Catherine had felt she had better face it and wrote and told them she was married and asked them to tea that Sunday to meet her husband. And when he heard that it wasn’t only women but Ned too, he damned him particularly, on the ground that he had a silly nose and wore a fur rug up to his chin; and, expressing extreme disgust at being kept in on his and Catherine’s only real afternoon by a blighter like that, he went off for a quick turn in the Park, promising faithfully to be back in time.

He wasn’t; and the Fanshawes got there first, and the flat was echoing with exclamations when he opened the door.

Catherine was sitting on the sofa, wedged between the two female Fanshawes, whose arms encircled her and whose free hands stroked her, and that worm Ned was looking on from his, Christopher’s, special chair.

“I’ve had influenza–that’s why,” Catherine was lying as he came in.

“But fancy not telling us you were married! Fancy not telling us a word!”

“Of course it’s what we’ve been dying to have happen for ages–isn’t it, Ned?”

“You sweet little thing, we’re so delighted–aren’t we, Ned?”

“Do tell us all about it. Isn’t he off his head with happiness? How pleased Virginia must be–”

“So nice for her to have a father again–”

“Are they devoted to each other?”

“Have you been down to Chickover with him yet?”

“We’re simply aching to see him–”

And there in the doorway he stood.

“Here is Christopher,” said Catherine, flushing and half getting up.

They all turned their heads. For a moment nobody spoke. He advanced on them with outstretched hand, doing his best to smile broadly, to be the welcoming host.

That young man. That boy. The boy they had found with Catherine one day, who had rushed out the minute they came in, and Catherine had laughed when they asked who on earth he was, and said all she knew about him was that he was certainly mad. That fellow. The youth who had glared through the window of the car and almost shook his fist….

The Fanshawes couldn’t speak. They couldn’t move either. They were stunned.