IX

On the Monday, then, a pretty little lady of about thirty to thirty-five, whose prettiness was of the kind that is mostly disapproved of in country places, got out of the train at Chickover, and was met by an embarrassed clergyman.

The corners of her mouth were turned up in pleased smiles–it was so exciting and delightful to know one was looking really nice again–as she trotted along the platform to where he stood hesitating. She was, besides being very glad she looked nice, very glad to be going to see Virginia and very glad to be going back to Christopher that evening. Also, upheld by the knowledge of her attractiveness, the journey hadn’t tired her; on the contrary, it had been amusing, with an eagerly friendly strange man in the carriage, concerned in every way for her comfort. Added to which, the day being hot, she was flushed through the fainter flush bestowed on her by Sackville Street, and this was always becoming to her. And, finally, her eyes were bright with the gaiety that takes hold of a woman after even a small success. So that, altogether, it was natural she should smile.

Stephen had been prepared for anything rather than this. He had nerved himself to a quite different encounter–certainly not to smiles. Bygones were to be bygones; his recent sacred experiences with Virginia had made him ardently determined to strive after the goodness she believed was his already, and his mother-in-law was to be received back with as much of the old respect for her as could possibly be scraped together. He would keep her before his mind as she used to be, and not dwell on that which she had since become. Besides, though she might have been happy when she wrote the postcard that had so unexpectedly intensified his own happiness, she couldn’t, he opined, be happy now. It was eight weeks ago that she wrote the card. Much, in marriage, may happen in eight weeks. Eight days was sometimes enough, so he understood, to open the eyes of the married. And here she was smiling.

“How do you do,” he said, grabbing at his soft hat with one hand and nervelessly shaking her hand with the other.

“How very nice of you to come and meet me,” she said gaily. Funny old Stephen. One couldn’t really be angry with him. And he was really very good. He looked extremely old, though, after having had Christopher before one’s eyes.

“Not at all,” said Stephen.

“How is Virginia?”

“Well.”

“I’m so glad. I’m longing to see her. Oh, how do you do, Smithers. How are the children? I’m so glad–”

People were staring at her. It had not yet been his lot to be in the company of a lady people stared at. He hurried her into the car. He tried hard to respect her.

There wasn’t much time between the station and the house for respect, but he did try. He had thought to clear the ground for it by reassuring her during the brief drive as to Virginia’s ignorance of the reasons that had led to her marriage. “Led to” was how he had intended to put it, rejecting the harsher and more exact word necessitated, for he was anxious to be as forgiving and delicate as possible, now that everybody concerned had turned the lamentable page. Besides, who was he to judge? Christ hadn’t judged the other woman taken in adultery.

Delicacy, however, was as difficult as respect. She herself seemed totally without it. Also it was difficult to feel she was his mother-in-law at all. She was curiously altered. He couldn’t make out in what the alteration consisted. Manifestly she was aping youth, but she was aping it, he admitted, so cleverly that if he hadn’t known her he might certainly, at a casual glance, have taken her for a daughter rather than a mother, though not the sort of daughter one would wish to have.

The moment they were seated in the car she herself threw delicacy to the winds. “You know, Stephen,” she said taking his hand–he didn’t know whether to withdraw it or behave as if he hadn’t noticed–“good does come in the strangest way out of evil.”

“I am not prepared to admit that,” Stephen felt bound to reply.

“Oh do let’s be real friends, won’t we?” she said, still smiling at him and looking like somebody’s slightly undesirable daughter. “Then we can really talk. I wanted to thank you for my great happiness–”

He tried to withdraw his hand. “I think perhaps–” he began.

“No, no–listen,” she went on, holding it tighter. “If it hadn’t been for you I never would have married Christopher and never would have had an idea of what happiness is really like. So you see, your thinking those wicked things of us was what brought it all about. Just like roses, coming up and flowering divinely out of mud.”

He had made the most serious resolutions to let bygones be bygones, and he shut his mouth in a thin tight line lest he should be unable not to say something Virginia would be sorry for. That his mother-in-law, who was once so dovelike, so becoming of speech and discreet of behaviour, should suddenly slough the decencies and allude in highly distasteful images to occurrences he was doing his utmost to forget and forgive, that she should use, herself having been wicked, the word wicked in connection with any thoughts of his was surely outrageous.

Yet even while he locked his mouth he remembered that it was his mother-in-law’s postcard that had renewed and made more radiant his Virginia’s belief in him. The service this regrettable mother-in-law had done him was great and undeniable. She had in the past, and consciously, done him very great service, and he had been grateful. She had eight weeks ago done him another. Should he, because the last service had been accidental and unconscious, not repay her? Twice over now she had helped him to his wife. The side of him that judged, disapproved, suspected, that was his early training and all the long years before Virginia, made him not able to unlock his mouth; the side of him that didn’t and wasn’t, that longed to justify Virginia’s belief in him, made him try extraordinarily hard to unlock it. He did earnestly now desire to let mercy prevail over justice; but, when he looked at Catherine, how hard it was. This blooming gaiety–he used the adjective correctly, not as Christopher would have used it–upset his plans. He had not been prepared for it. She was not like the same person.

He sat silent, struggling within himself, and they arrived at the house holding each other’s hands for the simple reason that he couldn’t get his away.

There on the steps stood Virginia, as if she had never stood anywhere else since Catherine left her on them the day she departed in Christopher’s side-car on the momentous journey that had changed her life; only this time Mrs. Colquhoun wasn’t standing there with her, and Virginia had grown considerably rounder.

“Sweet of you to come, mother,” she said, shy and flushed, when Catherine had run up to her and was folding as much of her as she could in her arms.

It had not escaped Virginia that her mother and Stephen had arrived hand in hand. She gave him a look of deep and tender gratitude when he, too, came up the steps. He wiped his forehead. He seemed to be in a constant condition of rousing Virginia’s gratitude for things he hadn’t done. Really, he thought, following the two into the house, he was a worm; a worm decked, by his darling wife’s belief, in the bright adornments of a saint.

Virginia was much struck by her mother’s appearance. She didn’t remember her as so pretty. She felt oddly elderly, with her awkward heavy body, and certainly she felt completely plain beside her. Her mother looked a little fashionable perhaps, for quiet Chickover, yet why she should Virginia didn’t know, for she had on the same country clothes she was wearing on her last visit and the visit before that. Her complexion was beautiful. Virginia was quite glad Mrs. Colquhoun had had to go away for the day on business and wouldn’t be there to see it. She felt–she didn’t know, for Mrs. Colquhoun had never mentioned such things, but she felt–that her mother-in-law thought women oughtn’t to have complexions once they were–well, older.

Lunch passed off well; the talk afterwards, which included Stephen who, anxious to be good and kind, remained with them and conversed to the very best of his ability, passed off well; tea passed off well; and after tea he purposely withdrew from the terrace, where they were sitting, so as to allow mother and daughter freedom to touch on matters of intimate feminine interest.

Then Virginia, after making her mother lie down on a long cane seat near hers, so as to rest before the journey home, screwed herself up to mentioning the marriage–it hadn’t yet been in any way alluded to–and said shyly, turning red as she spoke, “You know, mother, I’m really very glad about Mr.–Mr.–”

“No, not Mr. anything, darling. Call him Christopher.”

“Sweet of you, mother,” said Virginia, looking so much relieved that Catherine said, “What is, dearest?”

Virginia turned yet redder. “I was afraid,” she said, “you might want me to call him father.”

“Oh no, darling,” said Catherine, laughing nervously. “You couldn’t possibly.”

And taking Virginia’s hand and stroking it, looking down at it as she stroked, she said, “You don’t–you don’t think him too–too young, do you dearest?”

“No,” said Virginia stoutly.

“Darling!” exclaimed Catherine, raising the hand she was stroking and swiftly kissing it.

“How can I, when Stephen and I–”

Dear, dear little Virginia. Catherine was so much pleased and touched that she kissed Virginia’s hand over and over again. “My darling little daughter,” she said, “my own darling little daughter–” and added, and really at the moment believed it, forgetting how completely she had been absorbed only in Christopher, “I have missed you so.”

Virginia at once retreated into her shell. Instinctively she felt the lapse from truth. “Sweet of you, mother,” she said in her usual awkward little way.

She drew her hand back. It was strange, and not quite right somehow, for her mother to be kissing it like that. It made her feel uncomfortable.

“Wouldn’t you,” she suggested, so as to turn the talk to practical matters, “like to wash your face, mother?”

“Wash my face?” echoed Catherine, startled and staring at her. “Why?”

“I always find cold water such a help,” said Virginia, “if one is rather tired.”

Catherine dropped back again on to her cushions. “Darling child,” she murmured, closing her eyes a minute. Cold water –on the top of the delicate structure of Sackville Street–

No, she wouldn’t wash her face; she was quite comfortable, and not a bit tired, and was so very, very happy to be with her little Virginia.

Virginia got further into her shell. There was a something about her mother that she wasn’t accustomed to. She had always been a loving mother, but not quite–not exuberant like this. Something had gone. Was it–Virginia searched laboriously round in her scrupulous mind–dignity?

“I mustn’t miss my train,” said Catherine, when the church clock struck half-past six.

“There’s half an hour still,” said Virginia. “If you leave at seven it will be quite soon enough.”

“It’s the last train,” said Catherine. “Hadn’t the car better come round a little before seven?”

“If you missed it, mother, it wouldn’t matter. I could lend you everything, and Stephen and I would be very glad.”

“Darling,” murmured Catherine again, concealing a shudder. She pictured herself after the unavoidable washing, coming down next morning to breakfast….

At a quarter to seven Stephen thought it proper to appear once more and converse during the few remaining moments of his mother-in-law’s visit. He had decided he would pick and offer her a bunch of roses to take home with her; if he wasn’t able to respond to hand-holding, if he wasn’t able, after all, to respect her, he could at least offer her roses. Virginia would be pleased, and his own conscience slightly soothed.

Catherine began putting on her gloves.

“Plenty of time,” said Stephen, seeing this. “It has occurred to me,” he continued, “that you might like a few roses.”

“How very nice of you, Stephen,” said Catherine, who had planted every one of the roses with her own hands, “but isn’t it too late?”

“Plenty of time. Smithers is most trustworthy about trains. I will gather them myself.”

And he went indoors to get a knife and a basket.

“I’m sure I ought to go,” said Catherine nervously to Virginia.

“The car isn’t round yet, mother. Smithers is never late.”

“I believe,” said Stephen, coming out again, knife and basket in hand, pausing on the terrace and considering the sky, “you will have a comparatively cool journey back. I rather fancy there has been a thunderstorm over towards Salisbury, and it will have cleared the air when you arrive there.”

He went down the steps on to the lawn, and began choosing roses with care and deliberation.

“Virginia darling, oughtn’t I to go?” Catherine asked, fidgeting.

“It isn’t seven yet, mother,” said Virginia patiently, a little hurt by this extreme anxiety not to be obliged to spend the night with them. Stephen on the lawn was carefully removing the thorns from the roses he had cut.

The church clock began to strike seven. Catherine started. “There,” she exclaimed, getting up quickly, “I must go. Good-bye, darling. Never mind the roses, Stephen,” she called.

“You have at least another five minutes before you need leave,” he called back in his sonorous, carrying voice, still going on selecting the biggest blooms.

Kate appeared and said the car was waiting.

Catherine hurriedly bent down and kissed Virginia. “Goodbye, darling–I’ll go at once. I’m sure I ought to. Don’t get up–you look so comfy. It has been such a joy seeing you again. Stephen, I’m going–I shall miss the train–”

“Of course I’ll get up, mother, and see you off,” said Virginia, disengaging herself with difficulty from the rugs and cushions everybody was always now burying her in. “Stephen,” she called, “mother won’t wait.”

Stephen hastily cut one more rose, a particularly fine one, and hurried, infected by Catherine’s hurry, towards the terrace, stripping off the thorns as he came. His eyes being fixed on the thorns he was stripping off he didn’t see he had reached the steps of the terrace, and he stumbled and fell up them, scattering the roses at Virginia’s feet.

He wasn’t in the least hurt, and indeed was on his legs immediately again; but Virginia, who had stared at his prostrate form a moment in silence, her hand pressed to her heart, made a queer little sound and fainted.

Both Catherine and Stephen rushed to her. By the time help had been called, and they had lifted her and carried her indoors and laid her on a sofa, Catherine had missed her train.