“So you came here, my dear--after all?”
“After all, Nina. That just expresses the whole thing. Poor little
Rosamund had to go through the mill, and learn her own lesson, and then
after it was all over--well, she just wanted me--and there it was!”
“You were there when she wanted you.”
Bertha laughed a little.
“Well--one is, somehow. The generation that gives and the generation
that takes. I suppose one _took_ once upon a time, oneself, and this
keeps the balance true.”
“And your Minnie followed you, so you’re not alone?”
“Oh no! Dear Minnie! She’s played ivy to my oak-tree for so long that
it’s impossible to imagine her without a prop. I’m glad to have her,
and then Rosamund need never feel in any least little way bound--I’m
renting this tiny place from her, you know. It’s quite a business
arrangement.”
“So much the best way to do things, though, as you know, dearest, I’m
so dreadfully silly about practical things like rent and ground taxes
and technical terms like that. So you can really feel it’s your own
little domain?”
“For the time being. Anything else would have been rather an anomaly,
don’t you think? Rosamund has a great attachment to the place--always
wanted to come back here--and then it’s full of associations of her
childhood and little Francie’s. I know exactly what she feels about it.”
Bertha’s softened expression of full understanding gave weight to the
words.
“So Rosamund’s found herself,” said Mrs. Severing musingly.
“Yes, poor dear, through coming into contact with reality. Oh, Nina,
one would give anything to teach them some other way--with less pain
and fewer tears. But they won’t listen. _Ah! si jeunesse savait!_”
“Dear Bertie! I understand--and don’t think that I should ever think
_you_ egotistical and adding ‘_si vieillesse pouvait_!’” softly
said Mrs. Severing, freely sacrificing her reluctance to display an
indifferent French accent to the satisfaction of laying a delicate
emphasis on the pronoun relating to her friend.
“You’ve felt it all, just as I have, Nina, that’s why I can speak to
you so freely,” returned Bertha smiling.
“Darling Bertie! I wish I could give you longer, but you know how
tiresome people are, and Gwen Cotton is so dreadfully exacting.
_Wretched_ if I don’t stay there whenever I’m anywhere near the place,
and never allowing me out of her sight when I get there. It really is
absurd--a perfect infatuation--nobody can think why. It always makes me
laugh.”
“How dear of you not to mind! That sort of thing, making one look so
absolutely ridiculous, always makes _me_ angry,” said Bertha serenely.
“Is Morris there too?”
“He joins me to-morrow. I want him to come over and see you.”
“Yes,” said Mrs. Tregaskis meditatively. “Yes.”
So Morris came, and in his blue, direct gaze Rosamund read a sympathy
that he was later on to express in words.
Together in the garden, on an afternoon that reminded them both oddly
of another afternoon spent together in the garden at Porthlew, they
stood and looked over the valley.
“May I say something?” asked Morris suddenly and gently.
“Yes.”
“In spite of everything, you are happier here than at Porthlew, aren’t
you? I mean--it’s your right place, so to speak--this valley, and your
own home and everything.”
“Yes.”
“And you and Mrs. Tregaskis understand one another now?”
“Yes,” said Rosamund simply and seriously. “Cousin Bertie is an
extraordinarily brave person, isn’t she?”
“I think she is. And she’s a wonderfully understanding one, too. I’m
glad, Rosamund. I couldn’t bear to think of you in an uncongenial
atmosphere now.”
Rosamund, to whom it sometimes seemed that the understanding of Mrs.
Tregaskis was hardest of all to bear, said nothing. The reticencies,
the very reserves, which denoted Bertha’s penetration into the deepest
joys and sorrows that Rosamund knew, lashed at her sensitiveness as no
lesser sympathy or more shallow insight could ever have done.
Ludovic Argent, again an onlooker, slowly guessed at a little of it.
He wondered whether Morris Severing, in love with Rosamund, would
understand. He felt a curious certainty that on that understanding
would depend her answer to the inevitable question.
But Rosamund’s answer, when Morris asked her to marry him, was in no
way cryptic.
“I can’t, Morris. It’s out of the question. And, anyway, I shouldn’t be
any good to you.”
“Dearest, you would be everything in the world. Tell me why....”
“For one thing, I don’t love you. No, Morris--I _don’t_. If I
did--there wouldn’t be anything more to be said----”
“Indeed there would,” interjected her suitor with a sort of boyish
blitheness, “and I’d jolly well hear you say it, too.”
“It’s no good my playing at things any more,” said Rosamund, frowning
a little as she sought for her words. “I don’t mean because I feel
superior or anything ridiculous of that sort--but simply because it
doesn’t amuse me any longer.”
“I don’t want it to amuse you.”
“Well, I can’t do it with any conviction, if you like that better.”
“I don’t care if you do it with conviction or not, sweetheart--I’ll
convince you afterwards,” said Morris, his eyes smiling at her after
their endearing wont.
“No you couldn’t, Morris. Not the real part of me--the only part that
matters to either of us, in the least.”
Morris asked her to marry him again and again, and Rosamund marvelled
at her own indifference, was thrilled and shaken by his pleading, and
yet refused him with a weary certainty of being true to a standard
which, once seen, she must hold to.
The last time that she said she could not marry him finally brought
conviction to Morris.
“Oh, _do_ leave me,” she cried. “I’m so tired, and it’s all no use.
There’s more than one sort of love in the world, Morris, and your sort
and my sort aren’t meant for one another.”
“I could show you that they are, if----”
“Well,” said Rosamund with a sort of weary candour, “I don’t want you
to. I’m too tired, mentally, for any more violent emotions, Morris.
Honestly, I don’t believe the capacity is in me any more.”
“If you fell in love, Rosamund.”
“Oh, Morris!” said Rosamund, half impatiently and half in fatigue,
“there are more ways of loving than falling in love.”
Morris turned away despairingly and left her, carrying with him the
unescapable conviction that Rosamund had no need of him.
Definitely unattainable, she became to him more desirable than ever
before, and it was of hardly any consolation to him that Nina, in the
deepest confidence, hinted at the tragedy obscuring his life, both
to her hostess and to as many of her hostess’ friends as appeared
sympathetic.
“My poor boy!” she said softly, and Morris divined that despair had
imparted a ravaged appearance to his handsome young face.
“I have only cared for one woman in my life,” he told himself, not
without some naïve feeling of surprise at the discovery. “First and
last, it’s been Rosamund. _On revient toujours à son premier amour._”
The aphorism was so pathetic that he repeated it next day to Nina, who
was evidently disposed for the rôle of adoring mother, sympathizing
blindly with her boy’s wrongs.
“I can’t forgive that girl!” she cried, with all the feminine unreason
of fiction, and a blaze in her great eyes that was distinctly
creditable in view of the fact that she so seldom called it into play.
“No,” said Morris magnanimously, “I’m not worthy of her, mother. It’s
all right--only I can’t let you blame her.”
“How can I help it, darling?” tenderly asked Nina. “My heart is
breaking for you.”
Morris, who was inclined to suppose that a monopoly of broken hearts
was his, at least for the time being, could do no less than turn away
with a stifled groan, indicating a heartbreak beside which Nina’s could
not hope to rank.
It might have been Mrs. Severing’s perception of this which caused her
to remark with some decision:
“You will never, never know, Morris, till you have children of your
own, what it is to see them suffer. It is all so infinitely more bitter
than any grief of one’s own--but the young don’t know--they don’t know.”
She broke off with one of those smiles which are sadder than tears--an
impression which Mrs. Severing could at all times convey with great
accuracy.
“My youth is over,” said Morris with profound bitterness. Rather to his
surprise, Nina repressed the obvious retort, and contented herself with
a faint sigh, expressing many things.
Morris felt encouraged to a further display of feeling.
“I must get out of this place, mother,” he declared with an abandon of
recklessness that almost turned the luxurious Towers into a medieval
dungeon with every drawbridge up and guarded.
“Yes, my darling.”
“I--I can’t quite stand being so near _her_,” groaned Morris.
“We’ll go home again to-morrow,” soothingly declared Nina, who was
tired of Lady Cotton’s unappreciative adulation and also hated being
asked to “give a little music” every evening after dinner.
“Mother! _how_ you understand!” cried Morris in a sudden rush of
gratitude.
Nina looked at her son with liquid eyes.
He let her take his hand for a moment, gave hers a squeeze that drove
the stones of her rings into her fingers, and dashed out of the room.
Nina unavoidably devoted an intense second or two to the absorbing
pain in her fingers, but did so, as it were, in parenthesis. At the
earliest possible moment she had recovered herself, and was murmuring
softly: “My little son!” She saw Morris as a baby boy again, and at the
same time clearly visualized her present self indulging in this tender
illusion.
“Such a _little_ boy,” murmured Nina again, her uninjured hand hovering
with a touching, instinctive sort of gesture about two feet from the
ground.
The same rapt look of retrospective tenderness tinged and irradiated
Mrs. Severing’s rather elusive and sketchy explanations of her hostess
and carried her serenely past the loud and affectionate reproaches that
assailed her up to the very moment of farewell.
“I hate to leave you,” she sighed, “but you must come and see my
Cornish home one day--_soon_.”
She stepped into the little car, swathed in the most becoming of
amber coloured veils, and remarked to Morris almost as they left the
hall-door:
“Not that anything would ever induce me to have either of them inside
my house.”
Her matter-of-fact tone caused Morris to break into an irrepressible
laugh, and after an instant she joined him. For a moment they enjoyed
a delightful sense of companionship. But Morris speedily resumed his
dejection, and even added to it a dash of recklessness that caused him
to sit back as far as possible in the driving-seat and disregard the
speed limit and his mother’s protests alike.
“Morris,” said Mrs. Severing bitterly, when the car had apparently
spun round a sharp corner on one wheel, “do you ever think of anyone’s
wishes but your own? I do all I can to please you--cut short a visit
which I am enjoying, at the risk of hurting a great friend, come home
with you simply because you wish it--and you can’t even do such a small
thing as drive a little bit carefully when I beg you to.”
“What does it matter?” muttered Morris, in the tone of a desperado
outfacing death.
“Only that it’s very bad form to be a road-hog,” suavely said Nina.
The shot told, for Morris was exceedingly proud of his driving, but
discretion was never Mrs. Severing’s strongest weapon, and she added
rashly:
“How little you know what it is to be highly strung, my poor Morris!
My nerves have been a misery to me all my life long, and even if I’ve
never said very much about it, that doesn’t mean I don’t suffer. No one
can look at me,” said Nina with emotion, “and think me a strong woman.”
“Lady Cotton and Mrs. Tregaskis both told me they’d never seen you
looking better,” said Morris viciously.
Nina’s slight laugh was compounded of annoyance and of a rather
satirical compassion for the blindness of the authorities quoted.
“Dear Gwen! She always loves to say that I look better after staying
with her. As for Bertie, she’s such a tower of strength herself, that
I rather fancy nothing short of a broken leg would ever attract her
attention. I’ve heard other people say the same thing about her too,
dear, kind thing though she is.”
But Morris was annoyed.
“Well, I quite agree with them both,” he remarked disagreeably. “I’ve
never seen you look better, mother--the picture of health.”
His mother smiled the pitying smile of one better informed, and Morris,
subconsciously aware of it, gazed straight ahead of him with absorbed
determination.
“I’m afraid what I call my best would be a very poor state of health
for most people,” murmured Nina, and added hurriedly: “Don’t talk to
me any more, Morris, I want to close my eyes. I had a very nearly
sleepless night.”
Morris was not minded to concede to his parent the feminine privilege
of the last word.
“I’m sure you must be much stronger than you suppose, mother, if you
can sleep when you’re nervous.”
On this encouraging reflection he drove the car with great and
unnecessary rapidity to the junction where the chauffeur met him and
took charge of it, while Morris and his mother proceeded to Cornwall by
train.
The journey was made by Morris in a smoking carriage, with the
considerate remark: “Do finish your doze in peace, mother. I want to
smoke, and besides, I wouldn’t disturb you for the world.”
It may reasonably be conjectured that the annoyed Mrs. Severing did not
follow this filial advice.
The ensuing days at Pensevern were pleasant neither to Nina nor to her
son.
Morris played the piano stormily, and Nina, wincing perceptibly, said:
“Don’t, Morris. It jars horribly to hear that banging. Your touch is
not at all improved.”
“The ‘light trills and runs’ of the eighties are altogether out of
keeping with modern music, mother.”
“Dear me, is that what you call modern music, my poor boy? _I_ should
simply call it strumming. But I suppose,” said Nina with an annoying
laugh, “that you like to call it _improvization_.”
“Like!” said her son with gloomy scorn, unable to think of a better
retort. “I don’t suppose I shall ever like anything again.”
He flung out of the room.
Most of his days might be said to be spent in this exercise, resorted
to at ever shortening intervals, until finally the time came when he
prefaced it by a definite statement:
“Mother, this is no good. I must go away.”
“Very well, Morris. You know I’m used to being alone.”
“Of course I know it is lonely for you in a way, especially since Mrs.
Tregaskis has left Porthlew----”
“Very lonely,” repeated Nina with a patient smile. “But I shall make
some music, Morris, and read a good deal in the long evenings, and then
there’s the garden....”
Nina’s acquaintance with the garden hardly extended beyond the
kaleidoscope of herbaceous border outside the drawing-room windows, but
she liked the idea of silently communing with Nature.
“I shall go to America with that concert-party,” announced Morris,
referring to certain projects of a professional friend.
Nina, without the slightest warning, dissolved into tears.
She cried so much less becomingly than usual that Morris was moved to
quick, sudden compunction.
He came and knelt beside her.
“Darling, don’t cry. I won’t go if you hate it. But what am I to do
here? There’s no work fit for a man.”
Nina continued to weep.
Morris gazed at her with miserable perplexity. Accustomed though he was
to Nina’s easy tears, they invariably caused him acute discomfort, and,
moreover, he was conscious of a certain feeling of remorse.
“Mother, don’t cry. I’ll stay if you want me, of course.”
“No--no--it isn’t that exactly.”
He watched her with growing anxiety, and felt that he would do
anything to stop her tears. In the tension of the moment, he sought
to relieve his own intense discomfort, and at all costs to stop his
mother’s weeping, by an impulsive suggestion.
“Come too! Why on earth shouldn’t you? _The_ Nina Severing would be an
enormous asset--you know they love your stuff over there.”
He saw with thankfulness that her tears had stopped, and hurried on
eagerly:
“Carrol wants someone to chaperone the two girls--those two who are
going to do the violin duets, you know--and of course your name would
be an immense draw.”
“Oh, Morris! It’s nonsense. How could I leave this place to look after
itself?”
Morris became aware that his project was being met with a tacit
acceptance. Material objections had never yet stayed any progress of
Nina’s.
“Easily!” he declared lightly. “You’d simply love it--and we needn’t be
tied to Carrol’s show after the three months are up. We’d come home on
our own, or stay out there for a bit.”
“I should be glad to leave England behind me,” said Nina recklessly,
and for no reason save the sensation of weariness induced by tears.
“And so would you.”
“Yes,” Morris declared vehemently. “Thankful. Look here, I’m going to
telegraph to Carrol and you’ll see what an enthusiastic answer he’ll
send.”
“_La vie de Bohème_ once more!” murmured the mistress of Pensevern,
with more appreciation of the sentence than its truth warranted. No
life of Bohemia had ever been, or ever would be, Nina Severing’s, but
her son knew by the phrase that he need fear no further display of
emotion.
“Am I mad?” he demanded of himself outside the door with some
amazement, then characteristically shrugged his shoulders and dismissed
the thought.
He hated Nina’s weeping, and had chosen the first means of consoling
her which had occurred to him.
It was not Morris’s way to envisage the consequence of his own impulses
until actually confronted by them, and in the urgencies of departure
both he and Nina found a salving for many things.
If, in the months that ensued, neither Morris nor Nina Severing found
that a momentary common impulse was to prove an enduring link between
them, the knowledge weighed lightly on Morris, to whom no enduring
link that humanity can forge would ever equal the glamour of a new
enthusiasm.
To Nina, the fundamental resemblance between them would hold out
eternal lures, and promises of a new understanding. That these should
fail as often as they should renew themselves, would never succeed in
permanently disturbing Mrs. Severing’s treasured conception of her own
motherhood.