XI

Christopher dined with Lewes the evening Catherine was at Chickover, and stayed with him till it was time to go to Waterloo to meet her train. He thoroughly enjoyed being with old Lucy again, and listening to his yarns about the imminent economic collapse of Europe. He had forgotten how interesting economics and Europe were. There were other important things in the world besides love, and it was a refreshment to get among them again for a bit.

They dined at the restaurant they used most often to go to when they lived together, and afterwards went back to Lewes’s rooms and sat in great contentment with the two windows wide open to the summer night, each in his own comfortable old chair, each with his feet on the sill of a window, smoking and talking, while the pleasant London summer evening street sounds floated up into the room, and the dusk deepened in the corners.

Next door was the room Christopher used to rage up and down. He laughed to think how calm and happy he now was. No more ragings up and down for him. Marriage set one free from all that sort of torment. Old Lucy ought to marry. Not that he seemed tormented in any way, but Christopher would have liked him to know for himself what a delight life could be. The poor chap hadn’t the beginning of the foggiest suspicion of it.

Lewes was very glad to see his friend looking so well and happy. Evidently the marriage was still a success. He found it impossible to believe that it would be lastingly successful. True, the lady on her wedding-day had seemed much younger than her years; but there were the years–he had himself seen them in black and white on the certificate, and they were bound sooner or later to gallop on faster and faster ahead of Christopher’s. However, few marriages, he understood, were lasting successes, so that perhaps after all it didn’t much matter.

The two therefore were in great harmony, each much pleased to be once more with the other.

“She’s gone down for the day to her daughter,” Christopher said, when Lewes, observing the laws of politeness, inquired after Catherine.

“She has a daughter?” asked Lewes surprised, for he had never heard of her.

“Certainly,” said Christopher, as who should say, “Hasn’t everybody?”

Lewes made no comment. He silently considered this further drawback to the marriage. And Christopher, happy and expansive, continued: “She has married a man years older than herself.”

“Who has?” inquired Lewes, not quite following.

“Well, Catherine hasn’t, has she.”

“No. I’m obtuse. Forgive me. I think I was surprised your wife should have a daughter grown up enough to marry.”

“It is absurd, isn’t it,” said Christopher, liking Lewes for this. “She’s much too young, isn’t she. He’s a parson, and old enough to be her father.”

“Whose father?” asked Lewes, again not quite following.

“His wife’s, of course. The girl’s only a girl, and he’s a horny-beaked old rooster.”

“Is he?” said Lewes, and thought things. Not that he, or, he admitted, anybody, could possibly have applied such epithets to Chris’s wife, but still…. And had his friend considered that he was now the stepfather-in-law of a person he described as a horny-beaked old rooster?

“Why, he’s old enough to be Catherine’s father too,” said Christopher.

“Is he?” said Lewes, reflecting how that could be. Wouldn’t that make him old enough, then, to be his wife’s grandfather? Well, best let it alone. It was a perplexing mix-up.

“I call it disgusting,” said Christopher.

Lewes was silent. Long ago he had observed how people are most critical in others of that which they do and are themselves. When he spoke again it was to return to the exposition and illustration of the doctrines of Mr. Keynes, from which he had so injudiciously wandered.

“Come with me to the station,” said Christopher, getting up at half-past eleven and preparing to go and meet Catherine at Waterloo.

“I think not,” said Lewes.

“Come on. It’ll do you good. You’ll see Catherine again. It’s time you did. And we’ll arrange with her when you’re to come to dinner.”

Lewes didn’t want in the least to see Catherine again, or be done good to, or go to dinner, but Christopher was determined, and he gave in and went; which was just as well, for when everybody had got out of the train and the platform was empty and it was clear she hadn’t come, at least he was able to reason with Christopher and restrain him from fetching out his motor-bicycle and tearing off through the night to Chickover.

“It’s that blasted son-in-law of hers,” Christopher kept on repeating–showing, Lewes considered, a lamentable want of balance. “He’s at the bottom of this–”

Lewes, applying his mind to probabilities, soon hit on the truth, and pointed out that the telegram that had certainly been sent was too late in arriving to be delivered in London that night, and he would get it the first thing in the morning.

“But suppose she’s ill? Suppose–”

“Oh my dear Chris, try and not be a fool. She has simply missed the last train. You’ll know all about it in the morning.” And he took him by the arm and walked him home to Hertford Street.

When they got there Christopher insisted on his going up and having a drink. Lewes did his best not to, for he had no wish to behold his friend’s married milieu; but Christopher was determined, and he gave in and went.

He felt a faint distaste at seeing his friend opening a door, his only by marriage, with a latch-key belonging really to a woman, but suppressed this as foolish. Fortunately the flat was not the thing of fal-lals he had imagined, and he was quite relieved on being taken into the drawing-room to find it so solid and so sombre.

“George,” explained Christopher, seeing his friend looking round.

“George?” repeated Lewes, who had never heard of him.

“All this black stuff.”

Lewes said nothing.

“Catherine’s first husband,” said Christopher. “He was old enough to be her father too.”

“Was he?” said Lewes, groping about among these different persons old enough to be people’s fathers.

He sank into a chair. He drank whisky. At intervals he tried to go, but Christopher wouldn’t let him. For two hours he had to listen to talk that made him feel dimmer and dimmer of mind, more and more as if his roots were wilting; for Christopher was jerked back by Catherine’s unexpected failure to come home, and his unhappiness at the prospect of the first night alone in their room, and his efforts not to be anxious and worried, into thinking and talking only of her.

“My dear chap–yes …,” “Old man, I’m sure of it …,” Lewes, as sympathetically as he could, from time to time interjected. But his head drooped; his spirit failed him. Women. What didn’t they do to a sensible, intelligent man? Made him go all slushy and rotten; turned him into nothing better than a jabbering ass. Much of it was whisky, Lewes allowed, as Christopher drowned his disappointment and secret fear in more and more of the stuff, but most of it was woman.

“Look here, I must be off,” he said, getting up firmly on Christopher’s showing a tendency, after quite a lot of whisky, to become too intimate in his talk for comfort. “This room’s pure George,” he had been saying, “but Catherine’s bedroom—you should see Catherine’s bedroom–” Was he going to offer to show it to him?

Lewes hurriedly got up and said he must be off.

“You’re not crawling back into your shell already?” cried Christopher, much flushed, and his hair, from his frequent passing his hand through it while he talked, much ruffled. “I’ll tell you what you are, Lucy–you’re nothing but a miserable whelk.” And he laughed immoderately.

“I’ve some work I must get finished to-night,” said Lewes, taking no notice of this.

“At two in the morning?” exclaimed Christopher, laughing louder than ever. “That’s just the sort of thing you would do at two in the morning. Get married, old whelk–get married–” He clapped him on the shoulder. “You jolly well wouldn’t–”

“Good night,” interrupted Lewes abruptly.

But after he had gone Christopher soon recovered from the exuberance of whisky, and went very sadly to bed. He missed Catherine terribly. The flat was the loneliest place without her. And what if something had happened to her after all, in spite of Lewes’s cold-blooded assurances that nearly always nothing happens to anybody? He didn’t sleep much. He hated being alone in that dear room of happiness; and when at breakfast he got the telegram, as Lewes had foretold, saying she was coming by the first train, he determined to chuck the office and go and meet her.

Catherine, however, anxiously turning over every possibility, had thought that he might do this, and at Chickover station, eluding Stephen who was talking to a parishioner, sent a second telegram saying she wouldn’t be back till dinner. Her one desire was to keep out of Christopher’s sight till she had been to Maria Rome. Impossible to let him see her in the state she was in. Well did she know that this was being a slave, a silly slave, and that it was cruel to leave him all day wondering what was happening, but she was a slave, and this cruelty was nothing to the cruelty to them both of letting him meet her and see what she now looked like really. So she sent the second telegram.

Naturally, Christopher was excessively perturbed when he got in. What in damnation had happened in that beastly Chickover? Never again should she go there without him. Never again should she go a step without him. And she hadn’t taken any luggage with her, and she would be worn out. Blast Stephen. Blast that girl. And probably the bird-faced mother-in-law had had a hand in all this too. If so, let her be specially and thoroughly blasted.

He looked up the trains, and found that one arrived at 5:30, and there was no other till after ten. The 5:30 must be the one, then. He told Mrs. Mitcham, who had shown every symptom of astonishment and uneasiness on getting to the flat that morning and finding her mistress hadn’t returned, to have dinner ready earlier than usual, because Mrs. Monckton would be badly needing food, and then he went to his office after all, intending to go to Waterloo to meet the 5:30.

What a day it was. He couldn’t do a stroke of work. He felt like nothing on earth after the whisky. His chief was sarcastic. Everything went wrong. At five he was starting for Waterloo when Mrs. Mitcham rang him up to say her mistress was safely back and resting.

Safely back? How had she managed that, with no train that he knew of?

He flew home. Catherine, her face beautifully rearranged, was lying in the shaded drawing-room.

“Why, darling–how? When–?” he cried, rushing across to her.

He didn’t wait for an answer. There was no time for one before he had picked her up and locked her in his arms.

Oh, how blessed this was–oh, oh how blessed this was, sighed Catherine, her cheek against his, her eyes shut, safe in heaven again.

The great feature of Maria Rome’s treatment was that it was husband-proof. Nothing came off.