Little children, love one another.... He could say that beautifully—and how beautiful it was—but he didn’t do it himself. Except Virginia, the rest of the world was at present left out from Stephen’s loving. The exhortation had been for her and Mrs. Mitcham, who had long loved one another in the form of affection and daily mutual courtesies.
Little children, love....
She was tired. She hadn’t walked so fast or so much for ages as she had that afternoon at Hampton Court. And the spring air was relaxing. And Christopher had such long legs, and strode easily over ground that took her innumerable small steps to cover. And, being clearly mad as well, it wasn’t only her feet he had fatigued, but her spirit. Stephen, so passive and indifferent; Christopher, so active and not indifferent enough; and she between them being agreeable, and agreeable, and for ever agreeable. Why did a woman always try, however fruitlessly, as with Stephen, or dangerously, as with Christopher, to be agreeable? She feared it was, at bottom, vanity. Anyhow it was very stupid, when it was so tiring, so tiring....
Little children, love....
She dozed; she more than dozed; she went to sleep. And she hadn’t been asleep five minutes before Christopher came back.
There was her wrap—he hadn’t given her her wrap yet, and found it when he went out where he had dropped it on the carpet outside her door. In any case he had meant to wait in the street till that incredible old son-in-law—that she should dare to try to put him off with stuff about the generations!—had gone, and then see her again unless it was very late. But the wrap made it his duty to see her again; and when he beheld, from the opposite pavement, Stephen emerge and go away at a quarter past nine, he walked up and down for another ten minutes in case the old raven should have forgotten something and come back, and then, the wrap on his arm, went in and up the stairs with all the dignity and composure that legitimate business bestows.
But he was not really composed; not inside. When Mrs. Mitcham opened the door at his ring and, still under the influence of Stephen’s exhortation to love one another, smiled brightly at him, he could hardly stammer out that he had something of Mrs. Cumfrit’s—her wrap——
‘Oh, thank you, sir. I’ll take it,’ said Mrs. Mitcham.
‘Well, but I want to see Mrs. Cumfrit a minute—it isn’t late—it’s quite early—I’ll go in for just a minute——’
And thrusting the wrap into her hand he made for the drawing-room.