“I suppose you are wondering what my feelings are?”
Essentially that was true. It was that very wonder which unsettled my
sympathy of a dense Occidental. I could get hold of nothing but of some
commonplace phrases, those futile phrases that give the measure of our
impotence before each other’s trials I mumbled something to the effect
that, for the young, life held its hopes and compensations. It held
duties too--but of that I was certain it was not necessary to remind
her.
She had a handkerchief in her hands and pulled at it nervously.
“I am not likely to forget my mother,” she said. “We used to be three.
Now we are two--two women. She’s not so very old. She may live quite a
long time yet. What have we to look for in the future? For what hope
and what consolation?”
“You must take a wider view,” I said resolutely, thinking that with this
exceptional creature this was the right note to strike. She looked at
me steadily for a moment, and then the tears she had been keeping down
flowed unrestrained. She jumped up and stood in the window with her back
to me.
I slipped away without attempting even to approach her. Next day I was
told at the door that Mrs. Haldin was better. The middle-aged servant
remarked that a lot of people--Russians--had called that day, but Miss
Haldin bad not seen anybody. A fortnight later, when making my daily
call, I was asked in and found Mrs. Haldin sitting in her usual place by
the window.
At first one would have thought that nothing was changed. I saw
across the room the familiar profile, a little sharper in outline
and overspread by a uniform pallor as might have been expected in an
invalid. But no disease could have accounted for the change in her black
eyes, smiling no longer with gentle irony. She raised them as she gave
me her hand. I observed the three weeks’ old number of the _Standard_
folded with the correspondence from Russia uppermost, lying on a little
table by the side of the armchair. Mrs. Haldin’s voice was startlingly
weak and colourless. Her first words to me framed a question.
“Has there been anything more in papers?”
I released her long emaciated hand, shook my head negatively, and sat
down.
“The English press is wonderful. Nothing can be kept secret from it,
and all the world must hear. Only our Russian news is not always easy to
understand. Not always easy.... But English mothers do not look for
news like that....”