“Not yet,” she said, adding that she would not be able to sleep. “There
is so much to say, so much to know.”
As she talked, dry-eyed now, for she had conquered her emotion—her tears
were because she was at home at last, among old and happy associations
once more—I was able to see how she had aged. But she did not look as
though her life with Ronnie had been a failure. There was no careworn
anxious suggestion; there was merely sadness in her loss, and fatigue.
She was still beautiful.
I did not want to ask any questions, and the principal one was answered
by her general demeanour with regard to Ronnie: they had been happy.
“I regret nothing,” her eyes seemed to say.
She had no plans. She did not know what she would do after leaving me.
How was every one? Was Mrs. O’Gorman still living? No. She was sorry.
She had been hoping to talk with her. How splendid, though, to find
Suzanne!
She seemed to be shy of referring to Rose again. I could not help
noticing it. Every silence seemed to be filled intensely with
consideration of her relations with her child and her child’s attitude to
her. She must have given endless thought to this matter, but to be so
near brought it all back more vividly and critically.
“I suppose—” she began once and stopped, and I knew that the rest of the
sentence would have been—“she knows”: meaning “she knows about me and
Ronnie?” Did daughters, she must often have asked herself, forgive
mothers who run away from them with other men?
Perhaps it was because her mind had travelled thus far that she suddenly
said again, “Dombeen, remember this. No matter how sad I may seem to be,
now and then, remember this: I regret nothing. Ronnie needed me more
than anyone.”
Then she became gayer and smiled her old smile.
“And you?” she said. “How are you? What beautiful white hair!”
“I am seventy,” I said. “Nothing else is the matter. But I always
maintain that white hair is beautiful only on the heads of others.”
She came at last to Rose again by a more direct route. “Those
pictures”—looking at the walls—“are they hers?”