He could, if he had been so inclined, have observed the process at work
after dinner, when, his mother seated with knitting in an arm-chair on
the one side of the fire, and he with a cigar in another arm-chair on
the other side of the fire, his legs stretched out straight to the
blaze, they talked intermittently, a conversation in which the future
played more part than the past. Henry found that his mother had definite
ideas about the future, ideas which she took for granted that he would
share. He knew that he ought to say at once that he did not share them;
but that would entail disappointing his mother, and this he was
reluctant to do—at any rate on the first day. Poor old lady—let her be
happy. What was the good of sending her to bed worried? In a day or two
he would give her a hint. He remembered that she was not usually slow at
taking a hint. He hoped she would not make a fuss. Really, it would be
unreasonable if she made a fuss; she could not seriously expect him to
spend his life in talking to Lynes! But for the present, let her keep
her illusions; she seemed so greatly to enjoy telling him about her
farm, and he needn’t listen; he could say “Yes,” and “Fancy,” from time
to time, since that seemed to satisfy her, and, meanwhile, he could
think about Isabel. He had promised Isabel that he would not be away for
more than three days at the outside. He hoped he would not find it too
difficult to get away back to London at the end of three days; there
would be a fuss if he went, but on the other hand Isabel would make a
far worse fuss if he stayed. Isabel was not as easy-going as he could
have wished, though her flares of temper, when they were not so
prolonged as to become inconvenient, amused him and constituted part of
the attraction she had for him. He rendered to Isabel the homage that
she attracted him just as much now as five years ago, before he left for
the Argentine. She had even improved in the interval; improved with
experience, he told himself cynically, not resenting the experience in
the least; she had improved in appearance too, having found her type;
and he recalled the shock of delight with which he had seen her again:
the curious pale eyes, and the hard line of the clubbed black hair, cut
square across her brows; certainly Isabel had attraction, and was as
wild as she could be, not a woman one could neglect with impunity, if
one didn’t want her to be off and away.... No. There was a flick and a
spirit about Isabel; that was what he liked. How his mother would
disapprove of Isabel! he sent out, to disguise a little chuckle, a long
stream of smoke, and the thought of his mother’s disapproval tickled him
much. His mother, rambling on about foot-and-mouth disease, and about
how afraid they had been, last year, that it would come across into
Gloucestershire, while Isabel, probably, was at some supper-party
sitting on a table and singing to her guitar those Moorish songs in her
husky, seductive voice. He was not irritated with his mother for her
difference; at another moment he might have been irritated; but at
present he was too comfortable, too warm, too full of a good dinner, to
find her unconsciousness anything but diverting; and, as the contrast
appeared to him more and more as a good joke, he encouraged her with
sympathetic comments and with the compliment of his grave attention, so
that she put behind her finally and entirely the disappointment she had
had over the three hundred acres, and expounded to him all her dearest
schemes, leaning forward tapping him on the knee with her long
knitting-needle to enforce her points, enlisting his sympathy in all her
difficulties with Lynes and Lynes’ obstinacy, exactly as she had planned
to do, and as, up to the present, she had not secured a very good
opportunity of doing. This was ideal: to sit by the fireside after
dinner with Henry, long, slender, nodding gravely, his eyes on the fire
intent with concentration, and to pour out to him all the little
grievances of years, and the satisfactions too, for she did not believe
in dwelling only upon what went wrong, but also upon that which went
right.
“And so you see, dear boy, I have really been able to make both ends
meet; it was a little difficult at times, I own, but now I am bound to
say the farm is paying very nicely. Lynes could show you the
account-books, any time; I think perhaps you ought to run your eye over
them. You must have picked up a lot of useful knowledge, out there?”
“Oh yes,” said Henry, broadly.
“Well, it will all come in very useful here, won’t it? although I
daresay English practice is different in many ways. I could see that
Lynes very quickly discovered that you knew what you were talking about.
It will be a great thing for me, Henry, a very great thing, to have your
support and advice in future.”
Henry made an attempt; he said, “But if I don’t happen to be on the
spot?”
“Oh, well, you won’t be very far away,” said Mrs. Martin comfortably.
“Even if you do like to have rooms in London I could always get you at a
moment’s notice.”
Henry found great consolation in this remark; it offered a loophole, and
he readily placed his faith in loopholes. He was also relieved, because
he considered, his mother having said that, there was no necessity now
for him to say anything. Let her prattle about the estate, and about the
use he was going to be to her; there would always be, now, those rooms
in London in which he could take refuge. “Why, you suggested it
yourself,” he could say, raising aggrieved eyebrows, if any discussion
arose in the future. It was true that her next observations diminished
the value of his loophole, but he chose to ignore that; what was said,
was said. Rooms in London, Christmas with his mother, and perhaps a
week-end in the summer, and a couple of days’ shooting in the autumn; he
wouldn’t mind a little rough shooting, and had already ascertained from
Lynes that there were a good many partridges and a few pheasants; and he
could always take back some birds to Isabel. He saw himself, on the
station platform, with his flat gun-case and cartridge bag, and the
heavy bundle of limp game, rabbits, partridges, and pheasants tied
together by the legs. He would go out to-morrow, and see what he could
pick up for Isabel. His mother would never object; she would think the
game was for his own use, in those rooms she, thank goodness, so
conveniently visualized. And if it wasn’t for Isabel, in future years,
well, no doubt it would be for somebody else.
He awoke from these plans to what his mother was saying.
“I don’t think it would be good for you to live entirely in the country.
So I shall drive you away, Henry dear, whenever you show signs of
becoming a vegetable. I shall be able to carry on perfectly well without
you, as I have done all these years. You need never worry about that.
Besides, you must go to London to look for Mrs. Henry.”
“What?” said Henry, genuinely startled.
His mother, said, smiling, that some day he would have to marry. She
would like to know her grandchildren before she died. There was the long
attic at the top of the house which they could have as a playroom.
“Sure there is no one?” she questioned him again, more urgently, more
archly this time, and he denied it laughing, to reassure her; and
suddenly the laughter which he had affected, became hearty, for he had
thought of Isabel, Isabel whom he would never dream of marrying, and who
would never dream of marrying him; Isabel, insolent, lackadaisical,
exasperating, with the end of a cigarette—a fag, she called
it—smouldering between her lips; Isabel with her hands stuck in the
pockets of her velveteen jacket, and her short black hair; Isabel
holding forth, perched on the corner of a table, contradicting him,
getting angry, pushing him away when he tried to catch hold of her and
kiss her—“Oh, you think the idea of marrying funny enough now,” said his
mother sagely, hearing him laugh, “but you may be coming to me with a
very different tale in a few months’ time.”
He was in a thoroughly good temper by now; he lounged deeper into his
arm-chair and stirred the logs with his foot. “Good cigars these,
mother,” he said, critically examining the one he took from between his
teeth; “who advises you about cigars?”
“Mr. Thistlethwaite recommended those,” Mrs. Martin replied enchanted.
“Mr. Thistlethwaite? Who’s Mr. Thistlethwaite?” asked Henry.
She had an impulse to tell him, even now, the story of Mr.
Thistlethwaite and the three hundred acres; to ask him whether he
thought she had acted very unscrupulously; but a funny inexplicable
pride held her back. She said quietly that Mr. Thistlethwaite was the
local M.P. Henry, to her relief, betrayed no further interest. He
continued to stir the fire absently with the toe of his shoe, and his
mother, watching him, looked down a long vista of such evenings, when
the lamplight would fall on to the bowl of flowers she placed so
skilfully to receive it, and on the black satin head of Henry.
X
She opened her window before getting into bed, and looked out upon a
clear night and the low-lying mists of autumn. It was very still; the
church clock chimed, a dog barked in the distance, and the breathless
silence spread once more like a lake round the ripple of those sounds.
She looked towards that bit of England which was sufficient to her,
milky and invisible; she thought of the ricks standing in the silent
rickyard, and the sleeping beasts near by in the sheds; she, who had
been brisk and practical for so many years, became a little dreamy. Then
bestirring herself, she crossed the room to bed. All was in order: a
glass of milk by the bed, a box of matches, a clean handkerchief, her
big repeater watch. She wound it carefully, and put it away under the
many pillows. She sank luxuriously into the pillows—that little pleasure
which was every night renewed. She thought to herself that she was
really almost too happy; such happiness was a pain; there was no means
of expressing it; she could not shout and sing, so it had to be bottled
up, and the compression was pain, exquisitely. For about five minutes,
during which she lived, with a swimming head, through a lifetime of
sensations, she lay awake; then amongst her pillows she fell asleep.