‘I was afraid something might have happened, mother,’ said Virginia, very stiff and grave.
‘Darling—I’m so sorry. It didn’t upset you?’
‘I was a little afraid. But it’s all right now that you’ve come back. Lunch is ready, and mother is waiting. Shall we go in?’
‘She will have told you, hasn’t she, of my escapade,’ said Catherine a little nervously as they went indoors, for Virginia was so very grave.
‘I hope you had a pleasant drive,’ said Virginia, wincing at the word escapade. Mothers didn’t have escapades. Such things were for them, and indeed for most people who wished to live the lives of plain Christians, unsuitable.
She ached with different emotions. The only way to keep her feelings out of sight, safely hidden, was to encase herself in ice.
She sat at the head of the table, a mother on either hand, and helped them in turn icily to mince. On the Saturdays of Stephen’s absences both parlourmaids, once he had been seen off, were given a holiday, and the dishes were placed on the table by Ellen. There was always mince for lunch on these Saturdays, because mince rested the cook. Also, it didn’t have to be carved. But it is not a food to promote good-fellowship; impossible to be really convivial on mince. The three, however, wouldn’t have been convivial that day even if the table had been covered with, say, quails; for in the consciousness of each was, enormous and vivid, that side-car and the young man who belonged to it.
Both Virginia and Mrs. Colquhoun earnestly desired that neither it nor he should be mentioned during lunch, because of Ellen, and Mrs. Colquhoun did her best to talk well and brightly about everything except just that. But Catherine was anxious to tell them quickly, before she became any more congealed, what was going to happen next. She knew it was past one already, and that at two Christopher and the motor-cycle would appear to fetch her, and that the entire household would be aware of her departure in the side-car. She was obliged to talk of it, and at the very first pause in Mrs. Colquhoun’s conversation began to do so.
How difficult it was. Worse than she had feared. Her cheeks got hotter. Virginia’s face, and her grieved, astonished eyes, made her stammer. And Mrs. Colquhoun, when she heard of the drive planned for that afternoon to London, on top of the drive that morning to goodness knew where, merely raised her hands and ejaculated ‘Insatiable!’
For some reason Catherine found this brief ejaculation curiously disconcerting.