Chapter 20

Christopher’s was the slowest motor-cycle on the road that day. At times it proceeded with the leisureliness of a station fly. They loitered along in the sunshine, stopping at the least excuse—a view, an old house, a flock of primroses. They had tea at Salisbury, and examined the Cathedral, and talked gaily of Jude the Obscure, surely the most unfortunate of men, and from him they naturally proceeded to discuss death and disaster, and all very happily, for they were in the precisely opposite mood of the one praised by the poet as sweet, and the sad thoughts evoked by Sarum Close brought pleasant thoughts to their mind.

How much they had to say to each other. There was no end to their talk, their eager exchange of opinions. 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; the women sighed; and old ladies, long done with envy, smiled with open benevolence between their bonnet-strings.

Unconscious of everybody except each other, they walked about Salisbury looking at the sights and not seeing them, so deeply were they engaged in talk. What could be more innocent than to walk, talking, about Salisbury? 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. Not in this way. Not——’ she tried to find the words to express it—’out of one’s turn.’

‘What one’s relations think, or wish, or approve, or deplore,’ said Christopher, who scented Stephen somewhere at the back of her remarks, ‘should never be taken the least notice of if one wishes to go on developing.’

‘Well, I seem to be going on developing at a breakneck rate.’

‘Besides, it’s jealousy. Nearly always. Deep down. The grudge of the half dead against the wholly alive, of the not wanted against the wanted. They can’t manage to be alive themselves, so they declare the only respectable thing is to be dead. The only pure thing. The only holy thing. And they pretend every sort of pious horror if one won’t be dead too. Relations,’ he finished, lighting a cigarette and speaking from the depths of an experience that consisted of one uncle, and he the most amiable and unexacting of men, who never gave advice and never criticised, and only wanted sometimes to be played golf with, ‘are like that. They have to be defied. Or they’ll strangle one.’

‘It seems dangerous,’ said Catherine, pursuing her first thought, ‘to show that one likes anything or anybody very much.’

‘Isn’t it the rankest hypocrisy,’ said Christopher with a face of disgust.

‘If you were bald, and had a long white beard——’ she began. ‘But even then,’ she went on after a pause, ‘if we looked pleased while we talked and seemed very much interested, we’d be done for.’

She smiled. ‘They wouldn’t mind at all,’ she said, ‘if you were eating muffins happily with a girl of your own age. It’s when somebody like me comes along, who has had her turn, who is out of her turn.’

‘They would have people love by rule,’ said Christopher.

‘I don’t know about love, but they would have them be happy by rule,’ said Catherine.

‘They must be defied,’ said Christopher.

She laughed. ‘We are defying them,’ she said.

Proceeding from Salisbury with the setting sun behind them, they continued with the same leisureliness in the direction of Andover and London.

‘Oughtn’t we to go a little faster?’ Catherine asked, noticing the lowness of the sun.

‘If you’re home by nine o’clock, won’t that be soon enough?’ he asked.

‘Oh, quite. I love this.’

‘I’d like to go on for ever,’ said Christopher.

‘Aren’t we friends,’ said Catherine, looking up at him with a smile.

‘Aren’t we,’ said Christopher, in deep contentment.

The chimney stacks of an old house on their right among trees attracted her, and they turned off the main road to go and look at it. The house was nothing specially beautiful, but the road that led to it was, and it went winding on past the house through woods even more beautiful.

They followed it, for the main road was uninteresting, and this one, though making a detour, would no doubt ultimately arrive at Andover.

Charming, this slow going along in the soft, purple evening. The smell of the damp earth and grass in the woods they passed through was delicious. It was dead quiet, and sometimes they stopped just to listen to the silence.

Companionship: what a perfect thing it was, thought Catherine. To be two instead of one, to be happily two, with no strain, no concealing or pretending, quite natural, quite simple, quite relaxed—so natural and simple and relaxed that it was really like being oneself doubled, but oneself at one’s best, at one’s serenest and most amusing. Could any condition be more absolutely delightful? And, thought Catherine, to be two with some one of the opposite sex, some one strong who could take care of one, with whom one felt safe and cosy, some one young, who liked doing all the things the eternal child in oneself liked doing so much, but never dared to for want of backing up, for fear of being laughed at—how completely delightful.