Chapter 10

In this way it happened that she stayed the night after all, and came down next morning looking quite different. She had breakfasted in her room, had lingered in it till the last moment, but finally was obliged to face her relations; and they were startled.

There was neither bloom nor gaiety now. The one had vanished with the other. Virginia thought her mother must have had far more of a shock the evening before than had been supposed. The fainting had been nothing, —when one was going to have a baby one did things like that, and they were of no consequence. She had soon recovered, and they had all three spent, Virginia thought, a very nice quiet evening afterwards, Stephen himself going to give the orders for her mother’s room to be got ready, and expressing the most hospitable satisfaction at her further stay. Her mother had been a little silent, that was all; and it hadn’t occurred to Virginia, who so soon was herself again, that she really had had a shock.

‘Why, mother——’ she exclaimed, when Catherine came down into the hall, ready to start.

‘I didn’t sleep,’ said Catherine, turning away her face and pretending to search for an umbrella she hadn’t brought.

They stared at her. What a difference. Virginia was concerned. Her poor little mother must really have been thoroughly frightened by her fainting.

‘But mother——’ she began, taking a step towards her, wanting to say something to reassure and comfort.

‘Oh, it’s nothing,’ said Catherine, bending over the umbrella-stand.

She was a bundle of nerves and acute sensitiveness. She felt she couldn’t bear to be touched. And why didn’t they see that to stand there staring...

She pulled the umbrellas in the stand about with shaking fingers, putting off the moment of turning round to say good-bye.

It wasn’t only that she had had to wash off Maria Rome and hadn’t slept—and indeed she hadn’t slept a wink—it was also that in the watches of the night, of this her first night alone since her marriage, once more in that house of long calm memories, she had seen, as she stared into the darkness and thought of the inevitable next morning and its humiliations, that she was on the high road to becoming a fool. Yes, a fool; a silly fool; the sort of fool she had herself smiled at when she was younger, the worst sort of fool, the elderly fool.

But how could she stop? Sitting up in bed she asked herself this question. She must keep up somehow with Christopher’s youth. She couldn’t let herself crumble into age before his eyes. If only he hadn’t begun by admiring her physically so much! If only his love hadn’t been based on what, adoring her, he called her exquisiteness. How difficult it is, thought Catherine, wide awake hour after hour, to go on being exquisite when one doesn’t sleep enough, and is tormented by fear of one’s lover, on whom one’s entire happiness depends, suddenly seeing one isn’t exquisite at all, but old, old. 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. Christopher unkind to her! Christopher...