‘You don’t mind, darling?’ said Catherine, putting her arm round her. ‘I mean, my going all of a sudden like this?’
Then she laughed a little. ‘I came all of a sudden, and I’m going all of a sudden,’ she said. ‘Am I a very uncomfortable sort of mother to have?’
Virginia flushed a deep red. How could she say Yes, which was the truth? How could she say No, which was a lie?
‘Mother,’ she said painfully, for the question insisted on forcing its way through her protective coating of ice, ‘you’re not going away to-day because you think—because you think——’
She stopped, and looked at her mother.
And Catherine, as unable not to lie when it came to either lying or hurting, as Virginia was unable, faced by such an alternative, to be anything but stonily silent, kissed her softly on each cheek and said, ‘No, darling, I’m not. And I don’t think anything.’
It wasn’t quite a lie. She wasn’t going away that day because of Virginia; she was going away now because of Christopher. Life was intricate. Lies were so much mixed up with truth. And as for love, it got into everything, and wherever it was one seemed to have to lie. Ah, to be able to be simple and straight. The one thing that appeared to be really simple and straight and easy was ordinary, affectionate friendship. Not too affectionate; not, either, too ordinary; but warm, and steady, and understanding. In fact, what hers and Christopher’s was going to be.
Ellen came in and asked if she should pack. Nothing had been said to Ellen, Virginia knew, yet here she was, full of a devotion she never showed in her ordinary work.
Catherine explained that she couldn’t take her luggage with her, and Ellen said, just as if Catherine were still her mistress and Virginia still a little girl, that she would see that it went up by the next train. She then got out Catherine’s fur coat, and gave her her gloves and a thick veil, and insisted that she should wear gaiters, kneeling down and buttoning them for her.
Virginia might have been a stranger standing looking on. And her mother was laughing and talking to Ellen, rather after the fashion of a child going off for a holiday. In a way it was a relief, because it did seem as if she hadn’t noticed anything, but it was an odd mood in her mother; Virginia couldn’t remember any mood quite like it.