At half-past seven he called again—his sermons would suffer, he was painfully aware—but with the same result. It was dark then, and he too began to feel anxious; not on his mother-in-law’s account, for whatever happened to her would be entirely her own fault, but on Virginia’s. She would be in a terrible state if she knew her mother had not reached home yet. That Mrs. Mitcham should still be absent from her duties he regarded as not only reprehensible and another proof of Mrs. Cumfrit’s laxness, but as a sign that she was unaware of her mistress’s impending return, which was strange.
Immediately after dinner—a bad one, but if it had been good he could not have appreciated it in his then condition of mind—he went back to Hertford Street, and unable to believe, in spite of the hall porter’s assurances, that the flat was still empty, rang and rang, and was found by Mrs. Mitcham ringing. His mother-in-law must be there by now. She was inside. He felt she was inside, and had gone to bed tired.
But directly he got in he knew she was not. There was a chill, a silence about the flat, such as only places abandoned by their inhabitants have. The drawing-room was as cold and tidy as a corpse. He kept his coat on. The idea of taking it off in such bleakness would not have occurred to him. He would have liked to keep his hat on too, for he had gone bald early, but the teaching of his youth on the subject of ladies’ drawing-rooms and what to do in them prevented him.
Mrs. Mitcham, coming in to light the fire, found him staring out of the window in the dark. The room was only lit by the shining in of the street lamps. She was quite sorry for him. She had not supposed him so much attached to Mrs. Cumfrit. Mrs. Mitcham was herself feeling rather worried by now, and as she made Catherine’s bed and got her room ready she had only kept cheerful by recollecting that a car had four tyres, all of which might puncture, besides innumerable other parts, no doubt equally able to have things the matter with them.
‘I’ll light the fire, if you please, sir,’ she said.
‘Not for me,’ said Stephen, without moving.
She lit it nevertheless, and also turned on the light by the sofa. She didn’t like to draw the curtains, because he continued to stand at the window staring into the street. Watching, thought Mrs. Mitcham; watching anxiously. She was quite touched.
‘Is there anything you would like, sir?’ she inquired.
‘Nothing,’ said Stephen, his gaze riveted on the street.
Throughout that dreadful night Stephen watched at the window, and Mrs. Mitcham came in at intervals to see what she could do for him. She made coffee at eleven o’clock, and brought it to him, and fetched it away again at midnight cold and untouched. She carried in an armful of blankets at one o’clock, and arranged a bed for him on the sofa, into which he did not go. At five she brought him tea, which he did not drink. At eight she began to get breakfast ready. Throughout the night he stood at the window, or walked up and down the room, and each time she saw him he seemed to have grown thinner. Certainly his face looked sharper than it had the night before. Mrs. Mitcham could not but be infected by such agitation, though being naturally optimistic she felt somehow that her mistress was delayed rather than hurt. Still, it was impossible to see a gentleman like Mr. Colquhoun, a gentleman of great learning, she had heard, who must know everything about everything and had preached in St. Paul’s Cathedral,—it was impossible to see such a gentleman grow thinner with anxiety before one’s eyes without becoming, in spite of one’s secret faith, anxious too. And the hard fact that her mistress’s bed had not been slept in stared her in the face.