Love E-Book

Elizabeth von Arnim

• Herausgeber: Librorium Editions
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Beschreibung

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.

Leseprobe

LOVE

Elizabeth Von Arnim

© 2024 Librorium Editions

ISBN : 9782385746094

PART I

I

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.’

He began to feel slightly off The Immortal Hour. But at last the whole act was over and the lights were up again. She turned her flushed face to him, the music still shining in her eyes. She was always flushed and her eyes always shone at the end of the love scene; nor could he ever see that lovely headlong embrace of the lovers without feeling extraordinarily stirred up. God, to be embraced like that.... He was starving for love.

‘Isn’t it marvellous,’ she breathed.

‘Are you ever going to let me come and see you?’ he asked, without losing another second.

She looked at him a moment, collecting her thoughts, a little surprised. ‘Of course,’ she then said. ‘Do. Though——’ She stopped.

‘Go on,’ he said.

‘I was going to say, Don’t you see me as it is?’

‘But what is this?’

‘Well, it’s two or three times every week,’ she said.

‘Yes, but what is it? Just a casual picking up. You come—you happen to come—and then you disappear. At any time you might happen not to come, and then——’

‘Why then,’ she finished for him as he paused, ‘you’d have all this beautiful stuff to yourself. I don’t think they ever did that last bit more wonderfully, do you?’ And off she went again, cooing on as usual about The Immortal Hour, and he hadn’t a chance to get in another word before the confounded music began again and the faithful with one accord called out ‘Sh—sh.’

Enthusiasm, thought Christopher, should have its bounds. He forgot that, to begin with, his enthusiasm had far outdone hers. He folded his arms once more, a sign with him of determined and grim patience, and when it was over and she bade him her smiling good night and hurried off without any more words, he lost no time bothering about putting on his coat but simply seized it and went after her.

It was difficult to keep her in sight. She could slip through gaps he couldn’t, and he very nearly lost her at the turn of the stairs. He caught her up, however, on the steps outside, just as she was about to plunge out into the rain, and laid his hand on her arm.

She looked round surprised. In the glare of the peculiarly searching light theatres turn on to their departing and arriving patrons he was struck by the fatigue on her face. The music was too much for her—she looked worn out.

‘Look here,’ he said, ‘don’t run away like this. It’s pouring. You wait here and I’ll get you a taxi.’

‘Oh, but I always go by tube,’ she said, clutching at him a moment as some people pushing past threw her against him.

‘You can’t go by tube to-night. Not in this rain. And you look frightfully tired.’

She glanced up at him oddly and laughed a little. ‘Do I?’ she said. ‘Well, I’m not. Not a bit tired. And I can quite well go by tube. It’s quite close.’

‘You can’t do anything of the sort. Stand here out of the rain while I get a taxi.’ And off he ran.

For a moment she was on the verge of running off herself, going to the tube as usual and getting home her own way, for why should she be forced into an expensive taxi? Then she thought: ‘No—it would be low of me, simply low. I must try and behave like a little gentleman——’ and waited.

‘Where shall I tell him to go to?’ asked Christopher, having got his taxi and put her inside it and simply not had the courage to declare it was his duty to see her safely home.

She told him the address—90A Hertford Street—and he wondered a moment why, living in such a street with the very air of Park Lane wafted down it from just round the corner, she should not only not have a car but want to go in tubes.

‘Can I give you a lift?’ she asked, leaning forward at the last moment.

He was in the taxi in a flash. ‘I was so hoping you’d say that,’ he said, pulling the door to with such vigour that a shower of raindrops jerked off the top of the window-frame on to her dress.

These he had to wipe off, which he did with immense care, and a handkerchief that deplorably was not one of his new ones. She sat passive while he did it, going over the evening’s performance, pointing out, describing, reminding, and he, as he dried, told himself definitely that he had had enough of The Immortal Hour. She must stop, she must stop. He must talk to her, must find out more about her. He was burning to know more about her before the infernally fast taxi arrived at her home. And she would do nothing, as they bumped furiously along, but quote and ecstasise.

That was a good word, he thought, as it came into his head; and he was so much pleased with it that he said it out loud. ‘I wish you wouldn’t ecstasise,’ he said. ‘Not now. Not for the next few minutes.’

‘Ecstasise?’ she repeated, wondering.

‘Aren’t your shoes wet? Crossing that soaking pavement? I’m sure they must be wet——’

And he reached down and began to wipe their soles too with his handkerchief.

She watched him a little surprised, but still passive. This was what it was to be young. One squandered a beautiful clean handkerchief on a woman’s dirty shoes without thinking twice. She observed the thickness of his hair as he bent over her shoes. She had forgotten how thick the hair of the young could be, having now for so long only contemplated heads that were elderly.

To him in the half darkness of the taxi she looked really exactly like the dream, the warm, round, cosy, delicious dream lonely devils like himself were always dreaming, forlornly hugging their pillows. And as for her feet—he abruptly left off drying them. The next thing he felt he would be doing would be kneeling down and kissing them, and he was afraid she mightn’t like that, and be angry with him, and never let him see her again.

‘You’ve spoilt your handkerchief,’ she remarked, as he put it, all muddy, into his pocket.

‘I don’t look at it like that,’ he said, staring straight out of the front windows, and sitting up very stiff and away in his corner because he didn’t trust himself, and was mortally afraid of not behaving.

It was now quite evident to Christopher that he was in love, deeply in love. He felt very happy about it, because for the first time he was, as he put it, in love properly. All the other times had been so odious, leaving him making such wry faces. And he had longed and longed to be in love—properly, with somebody intelligent and educated as well as adorable. These three: but the greatest of these was the being adorable.

Out of the corners of his eyes he stole a glance at her. She didn’t look tired any more. What ideal things these dark taxis were, if only the other person happened to be in love as well. Would she ever be? Would she ever be again, or was all that buried with that scoundrel George? She had been fond of George; she had called him poor darling; but then one easily called the dead poor darlings, and grew fond of them in proportion as the time grew long since they had left off being alive and obstructive.

‘Where do you want me to drop you?’ she asked.

‘We’ve passed it,’ he said. ‘At least, he hasn’t gone anywhere near it. I live in Wyndham Place. I’ll see you safely home and then take him on.’

‘It’s very kind of you,’ she said, ‘but you’ll have to let me pay my share.’

‘And I say,’ he went on quickly, waving whatever she was doing with her purse impatiently aside, for by now they were careering across Berkeley Square and he knew the time was short, ‘you haven’t said if I may come and see you. I would like so frightfully to come and see you. There are such a lot of things I want to say—I mean, hear you say. And we do nothing but talk about that infernal Immortal Hour.’

‘What? Why, I thought you loved it.’

‘Of course I love it, but it isn’t everything. And we’ve given it a fairly good innings, haven’t we. Do let me come and see you. I shall’—he was going to say ‘die if you don’t,’ but he was afraid that might put her off, though he’d be hanged, he said to himself, if it wasn’t very likely perfectly true, so he quickly substituted ‘I shall be in London all next Sunday.’

They were at the bottom of Hertford Street. They were rushing along it. Even while he was speaking they were there at 90A. With a grinding of the brakes the taxi pulled up,—a violent taxi, the most violent he had ever met; and he might just as easily have had the luck to get one of those slow, cautious ancient ones, driven by bearded patriarchs who always came to his call when he had to catch a train or was late for a dinner, and always at every cross street drew back with an old-world courtesy and encouraged even horse-traffic to pass along first.

‘May I come next Sunday?’ he asked, obliged to lean across her and open the door, because she was preparing, as he didn’t move and merely sat there, to open it herself. ‘No—don’t get out,’ he said quickly, as she showed signs of going to. ‘It’s no use standing in the wet. Wait here while I go and ring——’

‘But look—I have a latchkey,’ she said. ‘Besides, the night porter is there.’

The night porter was; and hearing a taxi stop he opened the door at that moment.

‘And about Sunday?’ asked Christopher, with a desperate persistence, as he helped her out.

‘Yes—do come and see me,’ she said, smiling up at him her friendly, her adorable smile; and his spirits leapt up to heaven. ‘Only not this Sunday,’ she added; and his spirits banged down to earth.

‘Why not this Sunday?’ he asked. ‘I shall be free the whole day.’

‘Yes, but I won’t,’ she said, laughing, for he amused her. ‘At least, I feel sure there is something——’

She knitted her brows, trying to remember. ‘Oh yes,’ she said, ‘Stephen. I’ve promised to go out with him.’

‘Stephen?’

His heart stood still. George was settled, completely, felicitously, and now here was Stephen.

Then, just as the door was going to shut on her, leaving him out there alone, a warm and comforting light flooded his understanding: Stephen was her son; her little son, her only little son. Hateful as it was to reflect upon—really marriage was most horrible—George had perpetuated himself, and this delicate small thing, this exquisite soft little creature, had been the vehicle for his idiotic wish to carry on his silly name.

‘I suppose,’ he said, detaining her, his hat still in his hand, the rain falling on his bare head, the porter holding the door open and looking on, ‘you’re taking him to the Zoo?’

He could think of no place so likely as the Zoo on Sunday for Stephen, and to the Zoo he also would go, and have a look at those jolly little monkeys again.

‘The Zoo?’ she repeated, puzzled.

Then she began to laugh. ‘I wonder,’ she said, her face brimming over with laughter, ‘why you think Stephen wants to be taken to the Zoo. Poor darling’—another poor darling, and this time a live one—‘why, he’s as old as I am.’

As old as she was. Stephen.

She waved her hand. ‘Come some other Sunday,’ she called out as the door shut.

He stood for a moment staring at it. Then he turned away slowly, putting his hat on as he went down the steps, and he was walking away through the rain lost in the most painful thought, mechanically heading for home, when the taxi-driver, realising with amazed indignation what his fare was doing, jerked him back to his obligations by vigorously and rudely shouting ‘Hi!’

II

Ten days to wait till the Sunday after. It was only Friday night. He would see her in between, of course, at The Immortal Hour, and might perhaps manage to take her home again, but would he be able in these snippets of time, these snatches, these beginnings interrupted by the curtain going up or the lights going down, to find out from her who and what was Stephen? It was intolerable to have at last come across her and instantly to find oneself up against Stephen.

Dismal were his conjectures as he was rattled home by the taxi so lately made sweet by her presence. Stephen couldn’t be her brother, for nobody made appointments ahead and carried them out so conscientiously with brothers; and he couldn’t be her uncle or her nephew, the only two remaining satisfactory relationships, because she had said he was as old as she was. Who, then, and what was Stephen?

A faint hope flickered for an instant in the darkness of his mind: sometimes uncles were young; sometimes nephews were old. But the thing was too feeble to give warmth, and almost immediately went out. All Stephens should be stoned, he thought. It was what was done with the first one he had ever heard of; pity the practice hadn’t been kept up. How happy he now would have been except for Stephen. How happy, going to see her the next Sunday but one, going really to see her and sit down squarely with her by himself in a quiet room and look at her frontways instead of for ever only sideways, and she without the hat that extinguished such a lot of what anyhow was such a little. He might even, he thought, after a bit, after they had got really natural with each other—and he felt he could be more natural with her, more happily himself than with any one he had ever met—he might even after a bit have sat on the floor at her feet, as near as possible to her little shoes. And then he would have told her all about everything. God, how he wanted to tell somebody all about everything—somebody who understood. There wasn’t anybody really for understanding except a woman. It didn’t need brains to understand; it didn’t need learning, and a grind of education and logic and scientific detachment, and all the confounded rig-out Lewes, who shared his rooms with him, had. Such things were all right as part of a whole, and were more important, he was ready to admit, than any other part of it if one had the whole; but a man starved if that was all—just starved. Life without a woman in it, a woman of one’s own, was intolerable.

His face as he opened the door with his latchkey was gloomy. Lewes would be sitting in there; Lewes with his brains. Brains, brains....

Christopher had no mother or sister, and as long as he could remember seemed to have been by himself with males—uncles who brought him up, clerics who prepared him for school, again uncles with whom he played golf and spent the festivals of the year, Christmas, Easter, and Whitsuntide; and here in his rooms Lewes was waiting, always Lewes, making profound and idiotic comments on everything, and wanting to sit up half the night and reason. Reason! He was sick of reason. He wanted some one he could be romantic with, and sentimental with, and poetic, and—yes, religious with, if he felt like it, without having to feel ashamed. And how extraordinarily he wanted to touch—to touch lovely soft surfaces, to feel, to be warm and close up. He had had enough of this sterile, starved life with Lewes. Three years of it he had had, ever since he left Balliol,—three years of coming back in the evenings and finding Lewes, who hardly ever went out at night, sunk deep in his chair, smoking in the same changeless position, his feet up on the chimney-piece, lean, dry, horribly intelligent; and they would talk and talk, and inquire and inquire, and when they talked of love and women—and of course they sometimes talked of love and women—Lewes would bring out views which Christopher, whose views they used to be too, only he had forgotten that, considered, now that he had come to know Catherine, as so much—the word was his—tripe.

He shut the door as quietly as possible, intending to go straight to bed and avoid Lewes for that evening at least. He had been injudicious enough after the first time he sat next to Catherine and made friends with her to tell Lewes about it when he got back, and to tell him with what he quickly realised was unnecessary warmth; and naturally after that Lewes asked him from time to time how things were developing. Christopher almost immediately left off liking this, and liked it less and less as he liked Catherine more and more; and among many other things he afterwards regretted having told Lewes in the excitement of that first discovery, was that she was the woman one dreams of.

‘No woman is ever the woman one dreams of,’ said Lewes, who was thirty, so knew.

‘You wait till you’ve seen her, old man,’ Christopher said, nettled; though it was just the sort of thing he had freely said himself up to the day before.

‘My dear chap—see her? I?’

Lewes made a fatigued gesture with his pipe. ‘I thought you long ago realised that I’m through with women,’ he said.

‘That’s because you don’t know any,’ said Christopher, who wasn’t liking Lewes at that moment.

Lewes gazed at him with mild surprise. ‘Not know any?’ he repeated.

‘Not intimately. Not any decent ones intimately.’

Lewes continued to gaze.

‘I thought,’ he said presently, with patient mildness, ‘you knew I have a mother and sisters.’

‘Mothers and sisters aren’t women—they’re merely relations,’ said Christopher; and from that time Lewes’s inquiries were less frequent and more gingerly, and mixed with anxiety. He was fond of his friend. He disliked the idea of possibly losing him. He seemed to him to be well on the way to being in love seriously; and love, as he had observed it, was a great sunderer of friendships.

He heard him come in on the Friday night, and he heard him go, so unusually, into his room after that careful shutting of the front door, and he wondered. What was the woman doing to his friend? Making him unhappy already? She had made him more cautious already, and more silent; she had already come down between them like a deadening curtain.

Lewes moved slightly in his chair, and went on with Donne, whom he was reading just then with intelligent appreciation tinged with surprise at the lasting quality of his passion for his wife; but he couldn’t, he found, attend to Donne as whole-heartedly as usual, for he was listening for any sounds from the next room, and his thoughts, even as his eyes read steadily down the page, were going round and round in a circle something like this: Poor Chris. A widow. Got him in her clutches. And what a name. Cumfrit. Good God. Poor Chris. ...

From the next room there came sounds of walking up and down—careful walkings up and down, as of one desiring not to attract attention and yet impelled to walk—and Lewes’s thoughts went round in their circle faster and more emphatically than ever: Poor Chris. A widow. Cumfrit. Good God. ...

The worst of it was, he thought, shutting up Donne with a bang and throwing him on the table, that on these occasions friends could only look on. There was nothing to be done whatever, except to watch as helplessly as at a death-bed. And without even, he said to himself, the hope, which sometimes supports such watchers, of a sure and glorious resurrection. His friend had to go through with it, and disappear out of his, Lewes’s, life; for never, he had observed, was any one the same friend exactly afterwards as before, whether the results of the adventure were happy or unhappy. Poor Chris. A widow. Clutches. ...

The sounds of walking about presently left off. Lewes would have liked to have been able to look in and see for himself that his unfortunate and probably doomed friend was safely asleep, but he couldn’t do that; so he lit his pipe again and reached over for Donne and had another go at him, able to concentrate better, now that the footsteps had left off, but still with a slightly cocked ear.

What was his surprise at breakfast next morning to see Christopher looking happy, and eating eggs and bacon with his usual simple relish. ‘Hullo,’ he couldn’t help saying, ‘you seem rather pleased with life.’

‘I am. It’s raining,’ said Christopher.

‘So it is,’ said Lewes, glancing at the window; and he poured out his coffee in silence, because he was unable to see any connection.

‘I can chuck that beastly golf,’ Christopher explained in a moment, his mouth full.

‘So you can,’ said Lewes, well aware that up to now Christopher had looked forward with almost childish eagerness to his Saturdays.

‘I’ve been out already and sent a telegram to my uncle,’ said Christopher.

‘But I thought on occasions like this,’ said Lewes, ‘when the weather prevented golf, you still went down and played chess with him.’

‘Damn chess,’ said Christopher.

And in Lewes’s head once more began to revolve, Poor Chris. Cumfrit. Clutches. ...

III

Christopher had had an inspiration—sudden, as are all inspirations—the night before, after walking up and down his room for the best part of an hour: he would throw over his uncle and golf the next day, and devote the afternoon to calling on Catherine, thus getting in ahead, anyhow, of Stephen. How simple. Let his uncle be offended and disappointed as much as he liked, let him leave his thousands to the boot-boy for all he cared. He would go and see Catherine; and keep on going and seeing her, the whole afternoon if needs be, if she were out at the first shot. Whereupon, having arrived at this decision, peace enfolded him, and he went to bed and slept like a contented baby.

He began calling in Hertford Street at three.

She was out. The porter told him she was out when he inquired which floor she was on.

‘When will she be in?’ he asked.

The porter said he couldn’t say; and Christopher disliked the porter.

He went away and walked about in the park, on wet earth and with heavy drops falling on him in showers from the trees.

At half-past four he was back again. Tea time. She would be in to tea, unless she had it in some one else’s house; in which case he would call again when she had had time to finish it.

She was still out.

‘I’ll go up and ask for myself,’ said Christopher, who disliked the porter more than ever; and at this the porter began to dislike Christopher.

‘There’s only this one way in,’ said the porter, his manner hardening. ‘I’d be bound to have seen her.’

‘Which floor?’ said Christopher briefly.

‘First,’ said the porter, still more briefly.

The first-floor flat of a building in Hertford Street seemed removed, thought Christopher as he walked up to it on a very thick carpet, and ignored the lift, which had anyhow not been suggested by the hardened porter, from the necessity for travelling by tube. Yet she had said she always went to The Immortal Hour by tube. Was it possible that there existed people who enjoyed tubes? He thought it was not possible. And to emerge from the quiet mahoganied dignity of the entrance hall of these flats and proceed on one’s feet to the nearest tube instead of getting into at least a taxi, caused wonder to settle on his mind. A Rolls-Royce wouldn’t have been out of the picture, but at least there ought to be a taxi.

Why did she do such things, and tire herself out, and get her lovely little feet wet? He longed to take care of her, to prevent her in all her doings, to put his great strong body between her and everything that could in any way hurt her. He hoped George had taken this line. He was sure he must have. Any man would. Any man—the words brought him back to Stephen, who was, he was convinced, a suitor, even if she did forget his name. Perhaps she forgot because he was one of many. What so likely? One of many....

He felt suddenly uneasy again, and rang the bell of the flat in a great hurry, as if by getting in quickly he could somehow forestall and confound events.

The door was opened by Mrs. Mitcham, whom he was later so abundantly to know. All unconscious of the future they looked upon each other for the first time; and he saw a most respectable elderly person, not a parlourmaid, for she was without a cap, nor a lady’s maid he judged for some reason, though he knew little of ladies’ maids, but more like his idea—he had often secretly wished he had one—of a nanny; and she saw a fair, long-legged young man, with eyes like the eyes of children when they arrive at a birthday party.

‘Will Mrs. Cumfrit be in soon?’ he asked; and the way he asked matched the look in his eyes. ‘I know she is out—but how soon will she be in?’

‘I couldn’t say, sir,’ said Mrs. Mitcham, considering the eager-eyed young gentleman.

‘Well, look here—could I come in and wait?’

Naturally Mrs. Mitcham hesitated.

‘Well, I’ll only have to wait downstairs, then, and I can’t stand that porter.’

Mrs. Mitcham happened not to be able to stand the porter either, and her face relaxed a little.

‘Is Mrs. Cumfrit expecting you, sir?’ she asked.

‘Yes,’ said Christopher boldly; for so she was, the following Sunday week.

‘She usually tells me——’ began Mrs. Mitcham doubtfully; but she did draw a little aside, upon which he promptly went in. And as he gave her his hat and coat she hoped it was all right, for she thought she had her mistress’s friends and acquaintances at her fingers’ ends, and the young gentleman had certainly never been there before.

She took him towards the drawing-room.

‘What name shall I say, sir, when Mrs. Cumfrit comes in?’ she inquired, turning to him at the door.

‘Mr. Christopher Monckton,’ he said,—abstractedly, because he was going to see Catherine’s room, the room she probably spent most of her time in, her shrine; and Mrs. Mitcham hesitating a little—for suppose she had done wrong, letting in a stranger, and the tea-table put ready with poor Mr. Cumfrit’s silver spoons and sugar-basin on it? Ought she not rather to have asked the young gentleman to wait in the hall?—Mrs. Mitcham, with doubt in her heart, opened the door and allowed him to pass in, eyeing him as he passed.

No, he didn’t look like that sort of person at all, she rebuked and encouraged herself. She knew a gentleman when she saw one. Still, she left the door a tiny crack open, so that she would be able to hear if—— Also, she thought it as well to cross the hall with careful footsteps, and cast an appraising eye over his coat.

It was the coat of a gentleman; a rough coat, a worn coat, but unmistakable, and she went softly back into her kitchen, leaving its door wide open, and while she as noiselessly as possible cut bread and butter she listened for the sound of her mistress coming in, and, even more attentively, in order to be quite on the safe side, for the sound of any one going out.

The last thing, however, in the world that the young man who had just got into the drawing-room wanted to do was to go out of it again. He wanted to stay where he was for ever. Wonderful to have this little time alone with her things before she herself appeared. It was like reading the enchanting preface to a marvellous book. Next to being with her, this was the happiest of situations. For these things were as much expressions of herself as the clothes she wore. They would describe her to him, let him into at least a part, and a genuine part, of her personality.

And then, at his very first glance round, he felt it was not her room at all, but a man’s room. George’s room. George still going on. And going on flagrantly, shamelessly, in his great oak chairs and tables, and immense oil paintings, and busts, marble busts, corpsey white things on black pedestals in corners. Did nobody ever really die, then? he asked himself indignantly. Was there no end to people’s insistence on somehow surviving? Hardened into oak, gathered up into busts and picture frames, the essence of George still solidly cohabited with his widow. How in such a mausoleum could she ever leave off remembering him? Clearly she didn’t want to, or she would have chucked all this long ago, and had bright things, colour, flowers, silky soft things, things like herself, about her. She didn’t want to. She had canonised George, in that strange way people did canonise quite troublesome and unpleasant persons once they were safely dead.

He stood staring round him, and telling himself that he knew how it had happened—oh yes, he could see it all—how at the moment of George’s death Catherine, flooded with pity, with grief, perhaps with love now that she was no longer obliged to love, had clung on to his arrangements, not suffering a thing to be touched or moved or altered, pathetically anxious to keep it exactly as he used to, to keep him still alive at least in his furniture. Other widows he had heard of had done this; and widowers—but fewer of them—had done it too. He could imagine it easily, if one loved some one very much, or was desperately sorry because one hadn’t. But to go on year after year? Yet, once one had begun, how stop? There was only one way to stop happily and naturally, and that was to marry again.

And then, as he was looking round, his nose lifted in impatient scorn of George’s post-mortem persistence, and quite prepared to see whisky and cigars, grown dusty, on some table in a corner—why not? they would only be in keeping with all the rest—he caught sight of a little white object on the heavy sofa at right angles to a fireplace in which feebly flickered the minutest of newly lit fires. A bit of her. A trace, at last, of her.

He darted across and pounced on it. Soft, white, sweet with the sweetness he had noticed when he was near her, it was a small fox fur, a thing a woman puts round her neck.

He snatched it up, and held it to his face. How like her, how like her. He was absorbed in it, buried in it, breathing its delicate sweet smell; and Catherine, coming in quietly with her latchkey, saw him like this, over there by the sofa with his back to the door.

She stood quiet in the doorway, watching him with surprised amusement, because it seemed so funny. Really, to have this sort of thing happening to one’s boa at one’s age! Queer young man. Perhaps having all that flaming red hair made one....

But, though he had heard no sound, he was aware of her, and turned round quickly, and caught her look of amusement, and flushed a deep red.

He put the fur carefully down on the sofa again and came over to her. ‘Well, why shouldn’t I?’ he said defiantly, throwing back his head.

She laughed and shook hands and said she was very glad he had come. She was so easy, so easy; taking things so much as a matter of course, things that were so little a matter of course that they made him tremble—things like drying her shoes the night before in the taxi, or feeling on his face the soft white fur. If she would be shy, be self-conscious for even an instant, he thought, he would be more master of himself as well as of her. But she wasn’t. Not a trace of it. Just simple friendliness, as if everything he said and did was usual, was inevitable, was what she quite expected, or else didn’t matter one way or the other. She wasn’t even surprised to see him. Yet he had assured her he never could get away on Saturdays.

‘I couldn’t help coming,’ he said, the flush fixed on his face. ‘You didn’t expect me to wait really till Sunday week, did you?’

‘I’m very glad you didn’t,’ she said, ringing the bell for tea and sitting down at the tea-table and beginning to pull off her gloves.

They stuck because they were wet with the rain she had been out in.

‘Let me do that,’ he said, eagerly, watching her every movement.

She held out her hands at once.

‘You’ve been walking in the rain,’ he said reproachfully, pulling away at the soaked gloves. Then, looking down at her face, the grey hard daylight of the March afternoon full on it from the high windows, he saw that she was tired—fagged out, in fact—and he added, alarmed, ‘What have you been doing?’

‘Doing?’ she repeated, smiling up at the way he was staring at her. ‘Why, coming home as quickly as I could out of the rain.’

‘But why do you look so tired?’

She laughed. ‘Do I look tired?’ she said. ‘Well, I’m not a bit.’

‘Then why do you look as if you had walked hundreds of miles and not slept for weeks?’

‘I told you you ought to see me in daylight,’ she said, with amused eyes on his face of concern. ‘You’ve only seen me lit up at night, or in the dark. I looked just the same then, only you couldn’t see me. Anybody can look not tired if it’s dark enough.’

‘That’s nonsense,’ he said. ‘You’ve been walking about, and going in tubes. Look here, I wish you’d tell me something——’

‘I’ll tell you anything,’ she said.

What sweet eyes she had, what incredibly sweet eyes, if only they weren’t so tired....

‘But you must sit down,’ she went on. ‘You’re so enormous that it hurts my neck to have to look up at you.’

He threw himself into the chair next to her. ‘What I want to know is——’ he began, leaning forward.

He broke off as the door opened, and Mrs. Mitcham came in with the tea.

‘Go on,’ said Catherine encouragingly. ‘Unless it’s something overwhelmingly indiscreet.’

‘Well, I was only going to ask you—do you like tubes?’

She laughed. She was always laughing. ‘No,’ she said, pouring out the tea.

The teapot was impressive; all the tea arrangements were impressive, except the part you ate. On that had descended a severely restraining hand, thinning the butter on the bread, withholding the currants from the cake. Not that Christopher saw anything of this, because he saw only Catherine; but afterwards, when he went over the visit in his head, he somehow was aware of a curious contrast between the tea and the picture frames.

‘Then why do you go in them?’ he asked, Mrs. Mitcham having gone again and shut the door.

‘Because they’re cheap.’

His answer to that was to glance round the room—round, in his mind’s eye, Hertford Street as well, and Park Lane so near by, and the reserved expensiveness of the entrance hall, and the well-got-up, even if personally objectionable, porter.

She followed his glance. ‘Tubes and this,’ she said. ‘Yes, I know. They don’t match, do they. Perhaps,’ she went on, ‘I needn’t be so frightfully careful. But I’m rather scared just to begin with. I shall know better after the first year——’

‘What first year?’ he asked, as she paused; but he wasn’t really listening, because she had put up her hands and taken off her hat, and for the first time he saw her without her being half extinguished.

He gazed at her. She went on talking. He didn’t hear. She had dark hair, brushed off her forehead. It had tiny silver threads in it. He saw them. She was, as he had felt, as he had somehow known she was, older than himself,—but only a little; nothing to matter; just enough to make it proper that he should adore her, that his place should be at her feet. He gazed at her forehead,—so candid, with something dove-like about it, with something extraordinarily good, and reassuring, and infinitely kind, but with faint lines on it as though she were worried. And then her grey eyes, beautifully spaced, very light grey with long dark eyelashes, had a pathetic look in them of having been crying. He hadn’t noticed that before. At the theatre they had shone. He hoped she hadn’t been crying, and wasn’t worried, and that her laughing now wasn’t only being put on for him, for the visitor.

She stopped short in what she had been saying, noticing that he wasn’t listening and was looking at her with extreme earnestness. Her expression changed to amusement.

‘Why do you look at me so solemnly?’ she asked.

‘Because I’m terribly afraid you’ve been crying.’

‘Crying?’ she wondered. ‘What should I have been crying about?’

‘I don’t know. How should I know? I don’t know anything.’

He leaned over and timidly touched her sleeve. He had to. He couldn’t help it. He hoped she hadn’t noticed.

‘Tell me some things,’ he said.

‘I have been telling you, and you didn’t listen,’ she said.

‘Because I was looking at you. You know, I’ve never seen you once in my life before without your hat.’

‘Never once in your life before,’ she repeated smiling. ‘As if you had been seeing me since your cradle.’

‘I’ve always known you,’ he said solemnly; and at this she rather quickly offered him some cake, which he ignored.

‘In my dreams,’ he went on, gazing at her with eyes which were, she was afraid, a little—well, not those of an ordinary caller.

‘Oh—dreams. My dear Mr. Monckton. Do,’ she said, waving intangiblenesses aside, ‘have some more tea.’

‘You must call me Chris.’

‘But why?’

‘Because we’ve known each other always. Because we’re going to know each other always. Because I—because I——’

‘Well but, you know, we haven’t,’ she interrupted—for who could tell what her impetuous new friend might be going to say next? ‘Not really. Not outside make-believe. Not beyond The Immortal Hour. Can you see the cigarettes anywhere? Yes—there they are. Over there on that table. Will you get them?’

He got up and fetched them.

‘You’ve no idea how lonely I am,’ he said, putting them down near her.

‘Are you? I’m very sorry. But—are you really? I should imagine you with heaps and heaps of friends. You’re so—so——’ She hesitated. ‘So warm-hearted,’ she finished; and couldn’t help smiling as she said it, for he was apparently very warm-hearted indeed. His heart, like his hair, seemed incandescent.

‘Heaps and heaps of friends don’t make one less lonely as long as one hasn’t got—well, the one person. No, I won’t smoke. Who is Stephen?’

How abrupt. She couldn’t leap round with this quickness. ‘Stephen?’ she repeated, a little bewildered. Then she remembered, and her face again brimmed with amusement.

‘Oh yes—you thought I was going to take him to the Zoo to-morrow,’ she said. ‘The Zoo! Why, he’s preaching to-morrow evening at St. Paul’s. You’d better go and listen.’

He caught hold of her hands. ‘You must tell me one thing,’ he said. ‘You must.’

‘I told you I’ll tell you anything,’ she said, pulling her hands away.

‘Is Stephen—are you—you’re not going to marry Stephen?’

For a moment she stared at him in profound astonishment. Then she burst into laughter, and laughed and laughed till her eyes really did cry.

‘Oh, my dear boy—oh, my dear, dear boy!’ she laughed, wiping her eyes while he sat and watched her.

And at that moment Mrs. Mitcham appeared at the door and announced two ladies—their miserable name sounded like Fanshawe—and two ladies, who might well be Fanshawes, immediately swam in and enveloped Catherine in arms of enormous length, it seemed to him, kissing her effusively—how deeply he hated them—and exclaiming in incoherent twitters that they had come to carry her off, that the car was there, that they wouldn’t take no, that Ned was waiting——

Lord, what snakes.

He went away at once. No good staying just to see her being clawed away by Fanshawes to the waiting Ned. And who the devil was Ned? Yes, there he was—waiting right enough, sitting snugly in a Daimler that looked very new and expensive, while the porter, a changed man, hovered solicitously near. Ned needed every bit of the new Daimler and the fur rug and the hideously smart chauffeur to make up for the shape of his silly nose, thought Christopher, scornfully striding off down the street.

IV

Till the following Friday his week was harassed. It was wonderful to be in love, to have found her, but it would have been still more wonderful if he had known a little more about her. He wanted to be able to think of her and follow her through each minute of the day,—picture her, see her in his mind’s eye doing this and doing that, going here and going there; and there was nothing but a blank.

They were such strangers. Only, of course, strangers on the lower level of everyday circumstances. On the higher level, the starry level of splendid, unreasoning love, he had, as he told her, always known her. But to know her on that level and not on any other was awkward. It cut him off so completely. He couldn’t think what to do next.

Once, before he met her, in those dark days when he was still a fool and reasoned, he had remarked to Lewes that he thought it a pity and liable to lead to disappointment that love should begin, as it apparently did begin, suddenly, at the top of emotion. There ought, he said, to be a gradual development in acquaintanceship, a steady unfolding of knowledge of each other, a preparatory and of course extremely agreeable crescendo, leading up to the august passion itself. As it was, ignorant of everything really about the woman except what she looked and sounded like, why—there you were. It was bad, finished Christopher, aloofly considering the faulty arrangements of nature, to start with infatuation, because you couldn’t possibly do anything after that but cool off.

Now, remembering this when he couldn’t sleep one night, he laughed himself to scorn for a prig and an idiot. That’s all one knew about it when one wasn’t in love oneself. Love gave one a sixth sense. It instantly apprehended. The symbol of the sweet outer aspect of the loved one was before one’s eyes; from it one was aware of her inward and spiritual grace. The beloved looked so and so; therefore she was so and so. Love knew. But, on a lower level, on the level of mere convenience, it would be better, he admitted, to have had some preliminary acquaintance. He worshipped Catherine, and they were strangers. This was awkward. It cut him off. He didn’t know what to do next.

‘I must see you,’ he wrote, after three evenings at The Immortal Hour by himself. ‘When can I?’

And he sent the note with some roses,—those delicate pale roses in bud that come out so exquisitely in a warm atmosphere. They reminded him of her. They too were symbols, he said to himself, symbols of what would happen to her also if only she would let him be her atmosphere, her warmth; and though these roses were very expensive—ever so much for each bud—he sent three dozen, a real bunch of them, rejoicing in the extravagance, in doing something for her that he couldn’t really afford.

She wrote back: ‘But you are coming to tea on Sunday. Didn’t we say you were? Your roses are quite beautiful. Thank you so very, very much.’

And when he saw the letter, her first letter, the first bit of her handwriting, by his plate at breakfast, he seized it so quickly and turned so red that Lewes was painfully clear as to who had written it. Poor Chris. Cumfrit. Clutches. ...

So he wasn’t to see her till the next Sunday. Well, this state of things couldn’t be allowed to go on. It was simply too starkly ridiculous. He must get on quicker next time; manage somehow to explain, to put things on their right footing. What the things were, and what the right footing was, he was far too much perturbed to consider.

Of course he had gone to St. Paul’s on the Sunday after his visit, but he had not seen her. He might as easily have hoped to find the smallest of needles in the biggest of haystacks as Catherine at that evening service, with the lights glaring in one’s eyes, and rows and rows of dark figures, all apparently exactly alike, stretching away into space.

Stephen he had seen, and also heard, and had dismissed him at once from his mind as one about whom he needn’t worry. No wonder she had laughed when he asked if she were going to marry him. Marry Stephen? Good God. The same age as she was, indeed! Why, he was old enough to be her father. Standing up in the pulpit he looked like a hawk, a dry hawk. What he said, after the first sentence, Christopher didn’t know, because of how earnestly he was still searching for Catherine; but his name, he saw on the service paper a sidesman thrust into his hand, was Colquhoun,—the Rev. Stephen Colquhoun, Rector of Chickover with Barton St. Mary, wherever that might be, and he was preaching, so Christopher gathered from the text and the first sentence, in praise of Love.

What could he know about it, thought Christopher, himself quivering with the glorious thing,—what could he know, that hawk up there, that middle-aged bone? As well might they put up some congealed spinster to explain to a congregation of mothers the emotions of parenthood. And he thought no more about Stephen. He no longer wanted him stoned. It would be waste of stones.

Of Ned that week he did sometimes think, because although Ned was manifestly a worm he was also equally manifestly a rich worm, and might as such dare to pester Catherine with his glistening attentions. But he felt too confident in Catherine’s beautiful nature to be afraid of Ned. Catherine, who loved beauty, who was so much moved by it—witness her rapt face at The Immortal Hour—would never listen to blandishments from anyone with Ned’s nose. Besides, Ned was elderly. In spite of the fur rug up to his chin, Christopher had seen that all right. He was an elderly, puffy man. Elderliness and love! He grinned to himself. If only the elderly could see themselves....

Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday he went to The Immortal Hour, and sat and wilted because she wasn’t there. Thursday morning he sent her the roses. Friday morning he got her letter, and spent several hours when he ought to have been working in assuring himself that this couldn’t go on, this being separated, this having to wait two more whole days and a half, and then perhaps call there only to find ossifications like the Fanshawes calling there too, and turgescences like Ned, and that callosity Stephen.

At lunch-time on Friday he telephoned to her, and held his breath while he waited, for fear she should be out.

No—there was her voice, her heavenly little coo. ‘Oh, my darling!’ he was within an ace of crying down the thing in his relief. Only just did he manage not to, and as it took him a moment to gulp the word back again she repeated with gentle inquiry—what a perfect telephone voice—‘Yes—who is it?’

‘It’s me. Chris. Look here——’

‘Who?’

‘Chris. Oh, you know. You said you’d call me Chris. Christopher, then. Monckton. Look here, I wish you’d come and dine, will you? To-night? There’s an awfully jolly little restaurant—what? You can’t? Oh, but you must. Why can’t you? What? I can’t hear if you laugh. You’re not going to that thing again? Why, what nonsense. It’s becoming an obsession. We’ll go to it to-morrow night. Why didn’t you go last night? And the night before? No—I want to talk. No—we can’t talk there. No, we must talk. No it isn’t—not at all the same thing. I’ll come and fetch you at half-past seven. Yes but you must