Love
Copyright© 2024 by Elizabeth Von Arnim
Chapter 1
The first time they met, though they didn’t know it, for they were unconscious of each other, was at The Immortal Hour, then playing to almost empty houses away at King’s Cross; but they both went so often, and the audience at that time was so conspicuous because there was so little of it and so much room to put it in, that quite soon people who went frequently got to know each other by sight, and felt friendly and inclined to nod and smile, and this happened too to Christopher and Catherine.
She first became aware of him on the evening of her fifth visit, when she heard two people talking just behind her before the curtain went up, and one said, sounding proud, ‘This is my eleventh time’; and the other answered carelessly, ‘This is my thirty-secondth’—upon which the first one exclaimed, ‘Oh, I say!’ with much the sound of a pricked balloon wailing itself flat, and she couldn’t resist turning her face, lit up with interest and amusement, to look. Thus she saw Christopher consciously for the first time, and he saw her.
After that they noticed each other’s presence for three more performances, and then, when it was her ninth and his thirty-sixth—for the enthusiasts of The Immortal Hour kept jealous count of their visits—and they found themselves sitting in the same row with only twelve empty seats between them, he moved up six nearer to her when the curtain went down between the two scenes of the first act, and when it went down at the end of the first act, after that love scene which invariably roused the small band of the faithful to a kind of mystic frenzy of delight, he moved up the other six and sat down boldly beside her.
She smiled at him, a friendly and welcoming smile.
‘It’s so beautiful,’ he said apologetically, as if this explained his coming over to her.
‘Perfectly beautiful,’ she said; and added, ‘This is my ninth time.’
And he said, ‘This is my thirty-sixth.’
And she said, ‘I know.’
And he said, ‘How do you know?’
And she said, ‘Because I heard you tell someone when it was your thirty-secondth, and I’ve been counting since.’
So they made friends, and Christopher thought he had never seen anybody with such a sweet way of smiling, or heard anybody with such a funny little coo of a voice.
She was little altogether; a little thing, in a little hat which she never had to take off because hardly ever was there anybody behind her, and, anyhow, even in a big hat she was not of the size that obstructs views. Always the same hat; never a different one, or different clothes. Although the clothes were pretty, very pretty, he somehow felt, perhaps because they were never different, that she wasn’t very well off; and he also somehow felt she was older than he was—just a little older, nothing at all to matter; and presently he began somehow also to feel that she was married.
The night he got this feeling he was surprised how much he disliked it. What was happening to him? Was he falling in love? And he didn’t even know her name. It was the night of her fourteenth visit and his forty-eighth—for since they had made friends he went oftener than ever in the hope of seeing her, and the very programme young women looked at him as though they had known him all their lives—that this cold feeling first filtered into his warm and comfortable heart, and nipped its comfort; and it wasn’t that he had seen a wedding ring, for she never took off her absurd, small gloves—it was something indescribably not a girl about her.
He tried to pin it down into words, but he couldn’t; it remained indescribable. And whether it had to do with the lines of her figure, which were rounder than most girls’ figures in these flat days, or with the things she said, for the life of him he couldn’t tell. Perhaps it was her composure, her air of settled safety, of being able to make friends with any number of strange young men, pick them up and leave them, exactly when and how she chose.
Still, it might not be true. She was always alone. Sooner or later, if there were husbands they appeared. No husband of a wife so sweet would let her come out at night like this by herself, he thought. Yes, he probably was mistaken. He didn’t know much about women. Up to this he had only had highly unsatisfactory, rough and tumble relations with them, and he couldn’t compare. And though he and she had now sat together several times, they had talked entirely about The Immortal Hour—they were both so very enthusiastic—and its music, and its singers, and Celtic legends generally, and at the end she always smiled the smile that enchanted him, and nodded and slipped away, so that they had never really got any further than the first night.
‘Look here,’ he said, or rather blurted, the next time he saw her there—he now went as a matter of course to sit next to her—’you might tell me your name. Mine’s Monckton. Christopher Monckton.’
‘But of course,’ she said. ‘Mine is Cumfrit.’
Cumfrit? He thought it a funny little name; but somehow like her.
‘Just’—he held his breath—’Cumfrit?’
She laughed. ‘Oh, there’s Catherine as well,’ she said.
‘I like that. It’s pretty. They’re sweet and pretty, said together. They’re—well, extraordinarily like you.’
She laughed again. ‘But they’re not both like me,’ she said. ‘I owe the Cumfrit part to George.’
‘To George?’ he faltered.
‘He provided the Cumfrit. All I did was the Catherine bit.’
‘Then—you’re married?’
‘Isn’t everybody?’
‘Good God, no,’ he cried. ‘It’s a disgusting thing to be. It’s hateful. It’s ridiculous. Tying oneself up to somebody for good and all. Everybody! I should think not. I’m not.’
‘Oh, but you’re too young,’ she said, amused.
‘Too young? And what about you?’
She looked at him quickly, a doubt on her face; but the doubt changed to real surprise when she saw how completely he had meant it. She had a three-cornered face, like a pansy, like a kitten, he thought. He wanted to stroke her. He was sure she was exquisitely smooth and soft. And now there was George.
‘Does he—does your husband not like music?’ he asked, saying the first thing that came into his head, not really wanting in the least to know what that damned George liked or didn’t like.
She hesitated. ‘I—don’t know,’ she said. ‘He—usedn’t to.’
‘But he doesn’t come here?’
‘How can he?’ She stopped, and then said softly, ‘The poor darling’s dead.’
His heart gave a bound. A widow. The beastly war had done one good thing, then, —it had removed George.
‘I say, I’m most frightfully sorry,’ he exclaimed with immense earnestness, and trying to look solemn.
‘Oh, it’s a long while ago,’ she said, bowing her head a little at the remembrance.
‘It can’t be so very long ago.’
‘Why can’t it?’
‘Because you haven’t had time.’
She again looked quickly at him, and again saw nothing but sincerity. Then she was silent a moment. She was thinking, ‘This is rather sweet’—and the ghost of a wistful little smile passed across her face. How old was he? Twenty-five or six; not more, she was sure. What a charming thing youth was, —so headlong, so generous and whole-hearted in its admirations and beliefs. He was a great, loosely built young man, with flame-coloured hair, and freckles, and bony red wrists that came a long way out of his sleeves when he sat supporting his head in his hands during the love scene, clutching it tighter and tighter as there was more and more of love. He had deep-set eyes, and a beautifully shaped broad forehead, and a wide, kindly mouth, and he radiated youth, and the discontents and quick angers and quicker appreciations of youth.
She suppressed a small sigh, and laughed as she said, ‘You’ve only seen me at night. Wait till you see me in broad daylight.’
‘Am I ever to be allowed to?’ he asked eagerly.
‘Don’t you ever come to the matinées?’
She knew he didn’t.
‘Oh—matinées. No, of course I can’t come to matinées. I have to grind all the week in my beastly office, and on Saturdays I go and play golf with an uncle who is supposed to be going to leave me all his money.’
‘You should cherish him.’
‘I do. And I haven’t minded till now. But it’s an infernal tie-up directly one wants to do anything else.’
He looked at her ruefully. Then his face lit up. ‘Sundays,’ he said eagerly. ‘Sundays I’m free. He’s religious, and won’t play on Sundays. Couldn’t I——?’
‘There aren’t any matinées on Sunday,’ she said.
‘No but couldn’t I come and see you? Come and call?’
‘Hush,’ she said, lifting her hand as the music of the second act began.
And at the end this time too, before he could say a word, while he was still struggling with his coat, she slipped away as usual after nodding good night.
The next time, however, he was more determined, and began at once. It seemed to him that he had been thinking of her without stopping, and it was absurd not to know anything at all about a person one thinks of as much as that, except her name and that her husband was dead. It was of course a great stride from blank knowing nothing; and that her husband should be dead was such a relief to him that he couldn’t help thinking he must be falling in love. All husbands should be dead, he considered, —nuisances, complicators. What would have happened if George had been alive? Why, he simply would have lost her, had to give up at once, —before, almost, beginning. And he was so lonely, and she was—well, what wasn’t she? She was so like what he had been dreaming of for years, —a little ball of sweetness, and warmth, and comfort, and reassurance and love.
The next time she came, then, the minute she appeared he went over to where she sat and began. He was going to ask her straight out if he might come and see her, fix that up, get her address; but she chanced to be late that night, and hardly had he opened his mouth when the lights were lowered and she put up her hand and said ‘Hush.’
It was no use trying to say what he wanted to say in a whisper, because the faithful, though few, were fierce, and would tolerate nothing but total silence. Also he was much afraid she herself preferred the music to anything he might have to say.
He sat with his arms folded and waited. He had to wait till the very end of the act, because though he tried again when the curtain went down between its two scenes, and only the orchestra was playing, he was shoo’d quiet at once by the outraged faithful.
She, too, said, putting up her hand, ‘Oh, hush.’
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