'THOMAS,' said Mrs Holt with some hesitation.
'Yes,' said Mr Holt. 'What is it?'
'Oh! nothing,' said Mrs Holt. 'Just a queer idea. Nothing worth talking
about.'
'Well, come again when it is worth talking about,' growled Mr Holt,
relapsing into his newspaper.
'Of course there's nothing in it,' remarked Mrs Holt pertinaciously.
'Nothing in what?' her husband burst forth. 'What do you mean, Maria?
Have you got anything to say or not? If you have, let's have it out.'
'I was only going to say that Jack . . . of course I don't think that
Victoria sees it, but you understand he's a very young man, but I don't
blame her, he's such a funny boy,' said Mrs Holt lucidly.
'Good heavens, Maria,' cried her husband, 'do you want me to smash
something?'
'How you do go on,' remarked Maria placidly. 'What I meant to say is
that don't you think Jack's rather too attentive to Victoria?'
Mr Holt dropped his paper suddenly. 'Attentive?' he growled, 'haven't
noticed it.'
'Oh! you men never notice things,' replied Mrs Holt with conscious
superiority. 'Don't say I didn't warn you, that's all.'
'Now look here, Maria,' said Mr Holt, his blue eyes darkening visibly,
'I don't want any more of this tittle tattle. You can keep it for the
next P.S.A. I can tell you that if the young cub is "attentive" to Mrs
Fulton, well, so much the better: it'll teach him something worth
knowing if he finds out that there's somebody else in the world who's
worth doing something for beyond _his_ precious self.'
'Very well, very well,' purred Mrs Holt. 'If you take it like that, I
don't mind, Thomas. Don't say I didn't warn you if anything happens.
That's all.'
Mr Holt got up from the leather chair and left the room. There were
moments when his wife roused in him the fury that filled him when once,
in his young days, he had dropped steel bolts into the cement grinders
to gratify a grudge against an employer. The temper that had made him
rejoice over the sharp cracks speaking of smashed axles was in him
still. He had got above the social stratum where husbands beat their
wives, but innuendoes and semi-secrets goaded him almost to paroxysm.
Mrs Holt heard the door slam and coolly took up her work. She was
engaged in the congenial task of disfiguring a piece of Morris chintz.
She had decided that the little bag given her by an aesthetic friend was
too flat and she was busily employed in embroidering the 'eyebright'
pattern, with coloured wool in the most approved early Victorian manner.
'At any rate,' she thought, 'Thomas has got the idea in his head.'
Mrs Holt had not arrived at her determination to awaken her husband's
suspicions without much thought. She had begun to realise that
'something was wrong' one Sunday afternoon at the Zoo. She had taken
Jack and Victoria in the barouche, putting down to a fit of filial
affection the readiness of Jack to join them. She had availed herself of
the opportunity to drive round the Circle; so as to show off her adored
son to the Bramleys, who were there in their electric, to the Wilsons,
who were worth quite fifty thousand a year, to the Wellensteins too, who
seemed to do so wonderfully well on the Stock Exchange. Jack had taken
it very nicely indeed.
All the afternoon Jack had remained with them; he had bought animal
food, found a fellow to take them into the pavilion, and even driven
home with them. It was when he helped his charges into the carriage that
Mrs Holt had noticed something. He first handed his mother in and then
Victoria. Mrs Holt had seen him put his hand under Victoria's forearm,
which was quite ordinary, but she had also seen him hold her in so doing
by the joint of her short sleeve and long glove where a strip of white
skin showed and slip two fingers under the glove. This was not so
ordinary and Mrs Holt began to think.
When a Rawsley dame begins to think of things such as these, her
conscience invariably demands of her that she should know more. Mrs Holt
therefore said nothing, but kept a watchful eye on the couple. She could
urge nothing against Victoria. Her companion remained the cheerful and
competent friend of the early days; she was no more amiable to Jack than
to his father: she talked no more to him than to the rest of the
household; she did not even look at him much. But Jack was always about
her; his eyes followed her round the room, playing with every one of her
movements. Whenever she smiled his lips fluttered in response.
Mrs Holt passed slowly through the tragic stages that a mother goes
through when her son loves. She was not very anxious as to the results
of the affair, for she knew Jack, though she loved him. She knew that
his purpose was never strong. Also she trusted Victoria. But, every day
and inevitably, the terrible jealousy that invades a mother's soul crept
further into hers. He was her son and he was wavering from an allegiance
the pangs of childbirth had entitled her to.
Mrs Holt loved her son, and, like most of those who love, would torture
the being that was all in all for her. She would have crushed his
thoughts if she had felt able to do so, so as to make him more
malleable; she rejoiced to see him safely anchored to the cement
business, where nothing could distract him; she even rejoiced over his
weakness, for she enjoyed the privilege of giving him strength. She
would have ground to powder his ambitions, so that he might be more
fully her son, hers, hers only.
The stepping in of the other woman, remote and subtle as it was, was a
terrible thing. She felt it from afar as the Arabian steed hears the
coming simoon moaning beyond the desert. With terrible lucidity she had
seen everything that passed for a month after that fatal day at the Zoo,
when Jack touched Victoria's arm. She saw his looks, stolen from his
mother's face, heard the softness of his voice which was often sharp for
her. Like gall, his little attentions, the quick turn of his face, a
flush sometimes, entered into and poisoned her soul. He was her son;
and, with all the ruthless, entirely animal cruelty of the mother, she
had begun to swear to herself that he should be hers and hers only, and
that she would hug him in her arms, aye, hug him to death if need be, if
only in her arms he died.
Savagely selfish as a good mother, however, Mrs Holt remembered that she
must go slowly, collect her evidence, allow the fruit to ripen before
she plucked it. Thus she retained her outward kindnesses for Victoria,
spoke her fair, threw her even into frequent contact with her son. And
every day she tortured herself with all the tiny signs that radiate from
a lover's face like aerolites from the blazing tail of a comet. Now her
case was complete. She had seen Jack lean over Victoria while she was on
her knees dusting some books, and let his hand dwell on hers. She had
seen his face all alight, his mouth a little open, breathing in the
fragrance of this woman, the intruder. And the iron had entered into the
mother's heart so sharply that she had to hurry away unseen for fear she
should cry out.
Mrs Holt dropped her little work bag. She wondered whether her husband
would see. Would she have to worry him placidly for months as she
usually had to when she wanted her own way? Or would he understand and
side with her? She did not know that women are intuitive, for she knew
nothing either of women or men, but she felt perfectly certain that she
was cleverer than Thomas Holt. If he would not see, then she would have
to show him, even if she had to plot for her son's sake.
The door opened suddenly. Thomas Holt entered. His face was perturbed,
his jaw setting grimly between the two deep folds in his cheeks. That
was the face of his bad days.
'Well, Thomas?' ventured his wife hesitatingly.
'You were right, Maria,' answered Holt after a pause. 'Jack's a bigger
fool than I thought him.'
'Ah!' said Mrs Holt with meaning, her heart beating a sharp tatoo.
'I was standing on the first landing,' Holt went on. 'I saw them at the
door of the smoke-room. He asked her for a flower from her dress; she
wouldn't give it him; he reached over and pulled one away.'
'Yes?' said Mrs Holt, everything in her quivering.
'Put his arm round her, though she pushed him off, and kissed her.'
Mrs Holt clasped her hands together. A sharp pang had shot through her.
'What are you going to do?' she asked.
'Do?' said Holt. 'Sack her of course. Send him up to Rawsley. Damn the
young fool.'