Elizabeth Von Arnim

“ Yet if Stephen, Virginia, or Mrs. Colquhoun had met them they would have been moved by unpleasant emotions. Once during the afternoon this thought crossed Catherine’s mind. It was when, at tea in a confectioner’s, Christopher was holding out a plate of muffins to her, his face the face of a seraph floating in glory; and she took a muffin, and held it suspended while she looked at him, arrested by the thought, and said, ‘Why mayn’t one be happy?’
‘But one may, and one is,’ said Christopher.
‘One is,’ she smiled, ‘but one mayn’t. At least, one mayn’t go on being happy. Not over again. ”

“ They are not women, of like emotions to oneself, they are institutions. And if she to him seemed like an institution, he to her seemed oddly like a public building. A museum; a temple; a great, cool place through whose echoing emptiness one wandered. On a hot day, what a relief. These last days for Catherine had been hot—hot, and disturbing; and she did find it refreshing to sit like this among Stephen’s shadows. Presently her thoughts faded dim and quiet. Christopher’s image faded dim and quiet. ”

“ Catherine sat in her chair and dozed. She felt just as old as they made her. With drowsy wonder she remembered this time yesterday, and the afternoon at Hampton Court, when she had raced—yes, actually raced—about the gardens, propelled by Christopher’s firm hand on her elbow and keeping up with his great strides, laughing, talking, the blood quick in her veins, the scent of spring in her nostrils, the gay adoring words of that strange young man in her ears. Mr. Lambton must be about Christopher’s age, she thought. ”

“ Catherine would stay till Monday, so that Virginia shouldn’t be hurt by the knowledge that she had hurt her mother. Oh, these family tangles and tendernesses, these unexpected inflamed places that mustn’t be touched, these complicated emotions, and hurtings, and avoidances and concealments, these loving intentions and these wretched results! It wasn’t easy to be a mother successfully, and she began to perceive it was difficult successfully to be a daughter. ”

“ Chickover was dim as a dream now in Catherine’s mind; and the Catherine who had gone to bed there every evening in a growing wretchedness was a dream within a dream. With Christopher she was alive. He himself was so tremendously alive that one would indeed have to be a hopeless mummy not to catch life from him and wake up. Besides, it was impossible to be—anyhow for a short time—with some one who adored one, unless he was physically repulsive, and not be happy. That Christopher adored her was plain to the very passers-by. The men who passed grinned to themselves in sympathy ”

“ Catherine sighed, holding the letter in her hand. It seemed like the splashing of cool water, a distant, quiet freshness, compared to her fevered, strange, rapturous—but was it really rapturous?—life now.
An ache of longing to see Virginia stole into her heart. One’s children and new husbands—how difficult they were to mix comfortably. Mothers, to be completely satisfactory, must be ready for sacrifice, and more sacrifice, and nothing but sacrifice. They mustn’t want any happiness but happiness through, by, and with their children. ”

“ Monckton,’ said Catherine, in a far-away voice.
‘She doesn’t tell you who I am,’ smiled Mrs. Colquhoun, gripping his hand, still pleased with him in spite of his exclamation, for she liked young men, and there existed, besides, a tradition that she got on well with them, and knew how to manage them. ‘Have you noticed that people who introduce hardly ever do so completely? I’m the other mother-in-law.’
A faint hope began to flutter in Catherine’s heart. Christopher had the appearance of one who doesn’t know what to say next. ”

“ Catherine went away heavy-footed. She was poorer by fifty pounds, Christopher was coming home in a week, and that bright dream of meeting him at the station seemed to the last degree unlikely to be realised. Useless for the nurse to pretend there was a difference in her; there was none. Perhaps if she hadn’t pretended Catherine would have been more able to believe. But the nurse treating her like a fool—well, but wasn’t that precisely what she was? Wasn’t any woman a fool who could suppose that she could be stirred up to youth again by showers of stabbing crackles? ”

“ Virginia had made up her mind to devote herself entirely this week-end to her mother, and do her best to remove any suspicion she might have that she had not been, perhaps, quite wanted; and having shut the sandwiches in the suit-case she went in search of her.
Poor mother. Virginia wished, with a sigh, that she need never be hurt. She was so kind, and so often so sweet. But what problems mothers were after a certain age! Unless they were as perfectly sensible as Stephen’s, or else were truly religious. Religion, of course, was what was most needed, especially when one was old. ”

“ At the hotel they asked, as Catherine had suggested, for lunch to take with them, and while it was being got ready went out through the heat and hot-house flowers of the glass verandah to the fresh garden glowing and blowing with the blossoms of May. It was a sight, that garden on the cliffs above the sea, jewelled with tulips, frothed with fruit-blossom, and just beyond it, splendidly holding it in with a golden circlet, gorse.
‘It’s much more beautiful here than at our cottage,’ said Catherine, looking about her.
‘How could anything ever be more beautiful than our cottage?’ he answered ”

“ And so nearly true, too, for if passion had begun the ruin, grief had completed it, and the night and day of that birth and death, of the agony of Stephen and her own long-drawn-out torment, had put the finishing touches of age beyond her age on a face and hair left defenceless to lines and greyness without Maria Rome’s massage and careful dyes, and anyhow twice as worn and grey as they had been before she began the exhausting processes of Dr. Sanguesa. ”

“ Overwhelmed by the shocking bad fortune of running straight into Stephen, by the shocking bad fortune of having Christopher with her, who had carried up her things for her when it wasn’t in the least necessary, only one doesn’t think, one says yes without thinking,—naturally one does, for one can’t suspect life of going to hit one at every twist and turn—she had told him to go away, had almost pushed him away, as if, now that the mischief was done, his going or staying mattered any more. ”

“ It was like being forced to run a race that was quite beyond one’s strength, and from the beginning being out of breath. And next morning—she knew that separated from Sackville Street and out of reach of Maria Rome’s box she not only looked her age but much, much more now than her age, and Stephen and Virginia would be convinced the marriage was a bitter failure and punishment, and that Christopher was unkind to her. ”

“ For Stephen’s sake she ought to look older. People had smiled, Mrs. Colquhoun knew, at her being his mother-in-law. This seemed to his mother a pity. She was a little sensitive about it; the more so that there had been a time when she had secretly hoped Stephen would marry Mrs. Cumfrit—before, of course, his own splendid plan had dawned on her, and Virginia was still in socks. But Stephen, wise boy, knew what he was about, and waited patiently for little Virginia, of whom he had always been so fond. ”

“ Now Christopher might have behaved quite differently if he had found Catherine wide awake in her chair, properly lit up, and reading or sewing. He had meant, in coming back, only to reason with her. He couldn’t be sent away, cut short in the middle of a sentence and cast out as he had been by Stephen’s entrance, and not see her again at least to finish what he had to say. If she wouldn’t listen now, at least they might arrange an hour the next day when she would. He couldn’t go home to just black misery. He couldn’t. He was a human being. There were things a human being simply couldn’t do. ”

“ Colquhoun, no smile at all from Stephen; that was the nearest they got to it. Laughter—one of the most precious of God’s gifts; the very salt, the very light, the very fresh air of life; the divine disinfectant, the heavenly purge. Could one ever be real friends with somebody one didn’t laugh with? Of course one couldn’t. She and Christopher, they laughed. ”

“ Stephen didn’t need to watch Virginia as she watched Christopher, anxiously on the alert for the least sign of change in her, in what she did, what she said, in the very tone in which she said it. Stephen was safe, was at rest; Virginia would never, never do anything but love him. He was the father of her child, the authority she looked up to, the intelligence she adored. But Catherine—she wasn’t going to be the mother of any child of Christopher’s, she hadn’t got any intelligence for him to adore, and wouldn’t have wished to have authority, even if she could have, for him to look up to. ”

“ They went up the broad steps on to the familiar terrace. George’s peacocks—George had been of opinion that manors should have peacocks—were behaving as peacocks ought. In the great tubs on each side of the row of long windows—George had seen pictures of terraces, and they all had tubs—the first tulips were showing buds. The bells had begun to ring for afternoon service, and the sound floated across the quiet tree-tops as it had floated on all the Sundays of all the years Catherine had spent in that place. Such blameless, such dignified years. Every corner of them open to the light. ”

“ For in those remarkable hours that followed Virginia’s death, when it seemed to Catherine as if she had suddenly opened the door out of a dark passage and gone into a great light room, she saw for the first time quite plainly; and what she saw in that strange new clearness, that merciless, yet somehow curiously comforting, clearness,{397} was that love has to learn to let go, that love if it is real always does let go, makes no claims, sets free, is content to love without being loved—and that nothing was worth while, nothing at all in the tiny moment called life except being good. ”

“ Only, for a day to be happy it must not be too much like the night; there must be a contrast, and there must be a complete contrast. In the days and nights of the last week there had been hardly any contrast, and wasn’t contrast in life as indispensable as salt in cooking? Bliss there had been, bliss in quantities, wonderful quantities; wild bliss, then quiet bliss, then wild bliss again, then quiet bliss, but always bliss. He adored Catherine. Life was marvellous. ”

“ Virginia’s immediate impulse in her glad relief was to run down the steps to meet her and hug her, but instantly the reaction set in. Nothing had happened, her mother was unharmed, and it was really too bad that she should have gone in the foolish side-car. One surely had a right to expect at least dignity in one’s mother, a sense of the suitable; especially when she belonged, too, to Stephen, a man in a public position, with a sacred calling. ”

“ What she and Stephen’s mother wanted most to know at that moment was how long Virginia’s mother meant to stay. But no one can ever ask what most they want to know. What one most wants to know does invariably seem outside the proprieties, thought Virginia, slightly frowning at life’s social complications as she ate her bread and butter, thankful that she and Stephen lived in the country where there were fewer of them.
And Catherine, lying back in her chair—Mrs. Colquhoun never lay back in her chair unless she was definitely unwell and in a dressing-gown—didn’t in any way help. ”

“ Colquhoun was going to be at lunch.
She must be quick, while she still saw plain. Everybody wanted her to go, and she wanted to go; then why not go? Yes, but they wouldn’t be able to let her go without criticism, without disapproval. Dear me, she thought, how pleasant to be quite simple and straight. How pleasant to be free from sentimentalism, and all its grievances and tender places. How very pleasant not to mind if one’s children did sometimes get bored with one, and for them not to mind if you sometimes got bored with them. ”

“ So one day, tired of fighting, and in a sudden reckless mood, she said she would marry him; and as soon as possible after that they were married at the registrar’s in Princes Row, the witnesses being Mrs. Mitcham, as usual hoping for the best and in new bonnet-strings, and Lewes, who was so much upset that he could hardly sign the certificate, from which stared out at him in plain words the disastrous facts—widow, forty-seven, bachelor, twenty-five—and together went straight into what Christopher knew was heaven but Catherine spoke of placidly as the Isle of Wight. ”

“ Never did any one listen as sweetly as his Catherine. It was the best conversation he ever had, George considered, this talk to Catherine who so sweetly listened. Now she sat opposite Stephen, and Stephen gazed at the fire and hardly spoke, so that even her talent for listening was able to rest. ”

“ 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.{328}
Lewes was very glad to see his friend looking so well and happy. Evidently the marriage was still a success. ”

“ Virginia looked down at her mother pityingly. ‘I wish you understood, mother,’ she said gravely, ‘how little age has to do with it so long as people love each other. Why, what can it matter? We never think of it. It simply doesn’t come in. Stephen is Stephen, whatever his age may be. He never, never could be anything else.’
‘No,’ agreed Catherine rather wistfully, for if Stephen could only be something else she might find him easier to talk to. ”

“ Virginia, the youngest of the young—what inexhaustible, proud delight her youth gave him!—was not at all overwhelming.
But Christopher did not really interest him. The world was full of young men—all, to Stephen, very much alike, all with spirits that had to be blown off. The Chickover ones, his own parishioners, blew theirs off on Saturday afternoons at football or cricket according to the time of year, and the rest of the week it was to be presumed that work quieted them. ”

“ Why should the ones who didn’t die behave as though they had? Why should you send our happy life together to blazes because Virginia is dead? Isn’t that all the more reason for us who’re still alive to stick firmer than ever to each other? And instead you talk of divorce. Divorce? Because there’s been one tragedy there’s to be another? Catherine, don’t you, won’t you, can’t you see?’
And he lifted his head from her lap and looked at her, tears of anger, and fear, and love driven back on itself burning in his eyes ”

“ V At Chickover there had been the most painful consultations between Stephen and Mrs. Colquhoun as to the best thing to do under the deplorable circumstances. Should they or should they not tell Virginia? Could they, indeed, help telling her? Not all, of course; she must never be told all. The night spent somewhere between Chickover and London—they both felt that the entire stretch of country between those two points was from henceforth polluted—the night that made the scandalous marriage a necessity, must be kept from Virginia for ever. ”

“ The road beyond Chickover winds sweetly among hills. If one continues on it long enough, that is for twenty miles or so, one comes to the sea. This was where Christopher took Catherine that morning, not stopping a moment, nor slowing down except when prudence demanded, nor speaking a word till he got there. ”

“ The room disappeared, the relics of George disappeared, the world disappeared, and all the reminders of the facts of her life. Youth had swept down out of the skies and caught her up in its arms into a strange, warm oblivion. He and she were not any longer Christopher and Catherine—Catherine tied up in a tangle of relationships, of obligations, of increasing memories, Christopher an impetuous young man who needed tremendously to be kept in his proper place: she was simply the Beloved, and he was Love. ”

“ Feeling profoundly conscious of being only a weak woman in a world full of headstrong men, she opened the door for Stephen, and he, going through it without further speech, met Catherine coming out of the lift,—Catherine perfectly sound and unharmed,—and with her was Christopher. ”

“ It made them jumpy; and what could be worse for a young married woman than to be made jumpy? For three months Virginia’s mother had left her most properly alone, only coming down occasionally for a night, and never without being asked. Was she now going to inaugurate an era of surprise visits? Stephen wouldn’t like it at all, and Mrs. Colquhoun couldn’t help feeling, even as Virginia had felt, a little uneasy. If she had seen the luggage she would have felt still more so, for it was not, as Virginia had already noticed, the luggage of a mere week-end. ”

“ Mitcham’s head, or the porter’s, to mention it. Why on earth should they? His mind was quiet as to that. But Catherine out there, in a damp field, at night, perhaps for hours—Catherine who was so precious a jewel in his eyes that he felt she ought never to be let out of the softest, safest nest—Catherine brought there by him, marooned there by his fault—these were the things that made him swear under his breath, sitting beside her while she slept. ”