And a day or two afterwards, when Christopher, impelled by his desire for movement, by a terrific longing to do something, anything, that wasn’t lying in grass reading poetry to Catherine—if he didn’t read poetry to her she was surprised and asked him why, because at the beginning he had wanted to do nothing else—hired a two-seater and drove her round the island, stopping for the night at a little place on the west side where there was a small hotel they liked the look of, on their going in and asking if they could be put up for the night the young lady in the office, glancing at them, said she was very sorry but she had only one room vacant.
‘But we only want one,’ said Christopher, surprised at this answer. ‘We want a double room, that’s all.’
‘Oh, I’m sorry——’ said the young lady, turning red and bending over her ledger to hide her confusion. ‘Yes——’ she said, running her finger down the page, ‘I can give you No. 7.’
‘Do you think she thought we weren’t married?’ said Christopher, amused, when they were in No. 7 undoing their suit-cases. ‘Or do you think she thought we were so grand that we couldn’t do without a sitting-room?’
Catherine, very busy it seemed with her suit-case, said nothing. She couldn’t have. She felt sick, as if some one had hit her head. Again she had been taken for Christopher’s aunt. Or even for his—no, her mind swerved aside from that word; it simply refused to look at it.
They saw no more of the Jerrolds, though Christopher had talked of long and violent scrambles with the eagerly acquiescent Billy while they sprinted on ahead that morning before he realised that Catherine had been left behind out of sight. When he did discover this he had turned back at once. ‘Come on,’ he had said to the surprised Billy, seizing her wrist, ‘we must run.’
And he had run; and she had run, thinking it great fun but wondering why they should be running; and after that, when they all joined up again, her father had taken her back to the hotel and the Moncktons had gone for their picnic by themselves, and she had never set eyes on them again nor heard anything more of the promised scrambles.
But one thing she had heard, and with astonishment, from her father, and that was that Mr. Monckton was Mrs. Monckton’s husband.
‘No!’ cried Billy, her eyes very round; adding, after a silence, ‘Good Lord.’
‘Quite,’ said her father.