A cup was chipped. She held it to the light. Kate, of course, who really was most careless with china. At that rate Virginia would soon have none left.
She rang the bell and sent the housemaid for Kate, and when she came, her cap a little crooked and her hair a little wispy, Mrs. Colquhoun took the cup out into the passage to her and scolded her soundly, and it did them both good, and Kate was so much restored by this breath of normality that she was able to ask in a whisper how the master was, and Mrs. Colquhoun, dropping unconsciously into the very language of the occasion, replied that he was doing nicely.
And indeed Stephen’s moans seemed less since Catherine had taken his head on her lap and was stroking and patting him. She stroked and patted without stopping, and every now and then bent down and murmured words of encouragement in his ear, or else, when she found no words because her own heart was so full of fear, simply bent down and kissed him. Did he hear? Did he feel? She couldn’t tell; but she thought his moans grew quieter, and that he seemed dimly conscious of comfort when her hand passed softly down his sunken face.
‘You’ll wear yourself out,’ said Mrs. Colquhoun, pursing her lips to keep them from quivering.
‘It comforts me,’ said Catherine.
‘You’d much better have another cup of tea.’
‘How passionately he loves her. I didn’t quite realise——’
‘Loving passionately seems to get people into nice messes,’ said Mrs. Colquhoun grimly.
‘I suppose one really oughtn’t to love too much,’ said Catherine.
‘I consider Stephen preached himself into it. That course of sermons last Lent—you remember? I thought at the time that he was almost too eloquent. It sometimes very nearly wasn’t quite what one wishes a parish to hear. The love he talked about—well, he started with St. John’s ideas, but soon got away from them into something else. People, especially the servants, listened open-mouthed. They wouldn’t have done that if there hadn’t been something else in it besides the Bible. And you know, Catherine, one can talk oneself into anything, and in my opinion that is what Stephen did. And he came to think so much and so often of that side of life that he forgot moderation, and here he is. This is his punishment, and my disgrace.’