Chapter 11

Virginia, coming back to the house on Sunday from a short after-luncheon stroll in the garden, where the daffodils were making a great show and the blackbirds a great noise, with the intention of putting her feet up till tea and lying quietly in her boudoir, was surprised to see her mother standing on the terrace.

Her first thought was of Stephen. Her mother had never yet come uninvited and unexpected. Was anything wrong with him?

She hastened her steps. ‘Anything wrong?’ she called out anxiously.

Her mother shook her head reassuringly, and came down to meet her.

They kissed.

‘I had such a longing to see you,’ said Catherine, in answer to Virginia’s face of wonder; and, clinging to her a little, she added, ‘I felt I wanted to be close to you—quite close.’

She took Virginia’s arm, and they walked back slowly towards the house.

‘Sweet of you, mother,’ said Virginia, who was taller than her mother, having taken after George in height as well as features; but still she wondered.

She wondered even more when later on she saw her mother’s luggage. It suggested a longer stay than any she had yet made. But even as they strolled towards the house she felt a little uneasy. Her mother had been so satisfactory till now, so careful not to intrude, not to mar the felicities of the early married months. Stephen had warmly praised her admirable tendency to absence rather than presence, and Virginia had been very proud of having provided him with a mother-in-law he admitted could not be bettered. She loved to lay every good gift in her possession at Stephen’s feet, and had rejoiced that her mother should be another of them. Was there going now to be a difference?

She said nothing, however, except that it was a pity she hadn’t known her mother was coming, so that her room might have been ready for her.

‘And how did you manage at the station, mother, with nothing to meet you?’ she asked.

‘I got the fly from the Dragon. I had to wait, of course, but not long. Old Mr. Pearce was so kind, and drove me himself. I would have let you know, but I hadn’t time. I—I suddenly felt I must be with you. I had a longing to be just here, peacefully. It doesn’t put you out, dearest?’

‘But of course not, mother. Only you have missed hearing Stephen preach to-night.’

‘Yes. I’m sorry. I saw him yesterday, though. He dined with me.’

‘Oh, did he?’ said Virginia, suddenly eager. ‘How was he? How did he seem? Had he had a good journey up? Did he say anything about the sandwiches? I’ve got a new cook, and I don’t know if her sand——’

‘Has Mrs. Benson gone?’

‘Yes. We decided she was too expensive. You see, our idea is to cut down unnecessary expenses in the house so as to have more to carry out our schemes with, and this is the first time the new one has had to cut sandwiches. Did Stephen say anything about them?’

‘No; so I expect they were all right.’

‘I do hope they were. He hates restaurant cars, you know, and won’t go and have a proper lunch in them. And it’s important——’

‘Of course. How are you, darling?’

‘Quite well. It’s wonderful how well I feel. How did you think Stephen was looking?’

‘Quite well.’

‘Not tired? That journey every week is so tiring. I must say I shall be glad when Lent is over. Isn’t it wonderful, mother, how he works, how he gives up his life——’

‘And how very well he is preaching. You have made him preach like that.’

‘I?’

‘Yes. By just loving him.’

Virginia blushed. ‘But who could help it?’ she asked.

‘And by believing in him.’

‘I think everybody must believe in Stephen,’ she said.

Her mother pressed her arm. ‘Darling,’ she said softly; and thought how strange a thing love was, how strange that Virginia, by taking this spinster-man, this middle-aged dry man, and just loving him with all her simple young heart and entirely believing in him, had made him, so completely commonplace before in all his utterances, suddenly—at least in the pulpit—sing. Was it acute, personal experience that one needed? Did one only cry out the truth really movingly when under some sort of lash, either of grief or ecstasy?

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. Years of clear duties, clear affections—family years. And here was her serious young daughter carrying on the tradition. And here was she too come back to it, but come back to it disgracefully, to hide. She hiding! She winced, and held on tighter to Virginia’s arm. What would Virginia say if she knew? It seemed to Catherine that even her soul turned red at the bare thought.

They went into the boudoir, so recently her own—’I was just going to rest a little,’ said Virginia. ‘Yes, you must take great care not to stand about too much,’ said her mother—and Catherine tucked her up on the sofa, as she had so often tucked her up in her cot, and there they stayed talking, while the sweet damp smells a garden is so full of in early spring came in through the open window, and filled the room with delicate promises.

Throughout the afternoon Virginia talked, and Catherine listened. So it had always been in that family: Catherine listened. How thankful she was to listen now, not to be asked questions, not to have it noticed that she looked pale and heavy-eyed, leaning back in her own old chair, her head, which ached, on a cushion she remembered covering herself. Her humiliated head; the head Christopher only a few hours before had held in both his hands and—no, she wouldn’t, she couldn’t think of it.

Virginia had much to tell of all that she and Stephen were doing and planning and hoping and intending. Drastic changes were being made; the easy-going old days at the Manor were over for ever. She did not say this in so many words, because it might, perhaps, have been tactless, for were not the old easy-going ways her mother’s ways? But it was evident that a pure flame of reform, of determination to abolish the old arrangements and substitute arrangements that improved, helped, and ultimately sanctified, was sweeping over Chickover. Her father’s money, so long used merely on the unimaginative material well-being of a small domestic circle—she didn’t quite put it this way, but so it drifted into Catherine’s consciousness—was to be spread out like some rich top-dressing—nor did she say just this, yet Catherine had a vision of a kind of holy manure, and Stephen, girt with righteousness, digging it diligently in—across the wide field of the whole parish, and the crop that would spring up would be a crop of entirely sanitary dwellings. No one, said Virginia—it seemed to Catherine that it was the voice of Stephen—could live in an entirely sanitary dwelling without gradually acquiring an entirely sanitary body, and from a sanitary body to a sanitary soul was only a step.