Then, at dinner, she told Christopher what she was going to do.
He didn’t like it. He hated the idea of her not being back till so late. She was far too precious and tiny to go racketing off alone. What mightn’t happen to her? He wouldn’t be able to do a stroke of work all Monday for thinking of her. In fact, he took the news exactly in the way Catherine would have wished him to, and she loved him, if possible, more than ever. Naturally at the same time he made some extremely disrespectful comments on Stephen’s personal appearance and general character, though, as the old boy had been the means of making Catherine marry him, he couldn’t help, he pointed out, liking him in spite of his various and glaring defects; and as for Virginia, his opinion of that girl was what it had always been, but he admitted that a mother might probably see something in her, and that if Catherine felt herself irresistibly impelled to go down and visit her, he supposed she had better go and get it over.
‘She’s going to have a——’ began Catherine, but stopped. Really, she couldn’t bring herself to tell him. She would have to sometime, but why before it was absolutely necessary? Virginia’s baby would make her a grandmother. Christopher would be married to a grandmother. If he hadn’t up to now felt the difference in their ages this must inevitably wake him up to it. To think of it made her feel raw, as if her skin had been pulled off, and she left exposed, shrinking in an agonised apprehension and sensitiveness.... Love, love—if only she didn’t love him so much....
‘What is she going to have?’ he asked, as she stopped short, looking up from the strawberries he was eating.
‘A happy afternoon, I hope,’ said Catherine quickly, turning red and smiling nervously.
‘I should think so indeed—with you there,’ said Christopher. And added under his breath, so that Catherine couldn’t hear and have her darling little maternal affections hurt, ‘Young blighter.’
IX
On the Monday, then, a pretty little lady of about thirty to thirty-five, whose prettiness was of the kind that is mostly disapproved of in country places, got out of the train at Chickover, and was met by an embarrassed clergyman.
The corners of her mouth were turned up in pleased smiles—it was so exciting and delightful to know one was looking really nice again—as she trotted along the platform to where he stood hesitating. She was, besides being very glad she looked nice, very glad to be going to see Virginia and very glad to be going back to Christopher that evening. Also, upheld by the knowledge of her attractiveness, the journey hadn’t tired her; on the contrary, it had been amusing, with an eagerly friendly strange man in the carriage, concerned in every way for her comfort. Added to which, the day being hot, she was flushed through the fainter flush bestowed on her by Sackville Street, and this was always becoming to her. And, finally, her eyes were bright with the gaiety that takes hold of a woman after even a small success. So that, altogether, it was natural she should smile.
Stephen had been prepared for anything rather than this. He had nerved himself to a quite different encounter,—certainly not to smiles. Bygones were to be bygones; his recent sacred experiences with Virginia had made him ardently determined to strive after the goodness she believed was his already, and his mother-in-law was to be received back with as much of the old respect for her as could possibly be scraped together. He would keep her before his mind as she used to be, and not dwell on that which she had since become. Besides, though she might have been happy when she wrote the postcard that had so unexpectedly intensified his own happiness, she couldn’t, he opined, be happy now. It was eight weeks ago that she wrote the card. Much, in marriage, may happen in eight weeks. Eight days was sometimes enough, so he understood, to open the eyes of the married. And here she was smiling.