IV

After his father's death young Edwin Greene found school holidays

very trying. He continued to miss his father both as an actual

presence and as the restful element in the house, and he found

himself embroiled in a series of exhausting scenes with his mother.

These scenes ended in still more exhausting reconciliations, during

which she would hold him, clasped in her arms while she repeated that

she was now a widow and he her only hope, in accents varying from the

genuinely tearful to the luxuriously sentimental.

The fact that Edwin was only a child of ten did not deter her from

reproaching him bitterly when he wriggled, embarrassed, from her

embrace, and stood sullenly beside her, anxious only to get away from

an emotional situation with which he could not cope.

Exasperated by what she took to be indifference, she would stress

still further the note of affection.

"You're all I've got now, Edwin, and it seems as though you don't

care about me at all. Surely you can tell me that you'll love me and

look after me now your father's gone."

Shifting his weight from one foot to the other, staring at the carpet

in an agony of uneasy bewilderment, Edwin would mutter: "Of course I

shall."

"Is that all you can say?" Dora would cry, the familiar note of

hysteria creeping into her voice. "Leave me then; I'm better alone

than with a son who doesn't love his mother."

Guiltily conscious that something was expected of him, but not

knowing what it was, Edwin would seize his opportunity to escape from

the room, and the whole scene would be renewed later.

In time, however, Dora found it impossible to feed the flames of

despair on Edwin's mute discomfort, and she resigned herself to a

state of aggrieved self-pity.

A year or two after his father's death, Edwin, who had grown wary and

perceptive, realised that his mother's greatest pleasure in life was

to invite a few women friends to tea, to play bridge, or to spend the

evening, and then to embark on a prolonged and enjoyable narration of

her grievances; which was sure to be followed by an equally prolonged

recitation of similar grievances endured by one or other of the

ladies present. Conversation would continue along these lines until

everyone had exposed to their satisfaction, the more intimate

difficulties, annoyances and sorrows of their private life.

Expressions of sympathy having been exchanged, the depressing coterie

would break up, to meet again a few days hence and go over the same

ground with undiminished ardour.

On one occasion Edwin found himself involved in a painful scene not

only with his mother, but with one of his mother's friends, a Mrs.

Pratt, whom he instinctively disliked and distrusted. It was during

the summer holidays of 1917. For the last few years the person with

whom he had most in common, apart from his school-friends, was old

Mrs. Greene, his father's mother.

He was invited regularly to spend part of his holidays with his

grandparents in the country, and the tranquil undisturbed atmosphere

of their house was very welcome to him. He was on terms of easy

intimacy with both grandparents; they accepted him unquestioningly

without any of these probing enquiries into the state of his emotions

which made life at home so difficult for the rapidly developing boy.

At the beginning of these holidays he had already spent a week with

Mr. and Mrs. Greene before going to Bournemouth for a month with his

mother. But now there still remained a fortnight before going back

to school, and a letter had come from his grandmother inviting him to

stay again for as long as he could.

He opened the subject at breakfast.

Dora had been frowning over her newspaper as he read his letter, and

she suddenly burst out: "Well I must say I don't see why _The Times_

should report that Rodney and Edith were at the Ledyard wedding, and

leave my name out of the list. But some people always manage to get

their name in the papers."

Edwin realised that the moment was not propitious, but his eagerness

carried him beyond the need for discretion.

"I say, Mother," he began, "I've got a letter from Grannie asking me

to stay for a bit. Could I go to-morrow do you think? There isn't

very much of the holidays left."

Dora put down her paper and looked at him.

"You want to go then, Edwin?"

"Rather," Edwin assented heartily. "I'd love it."

He stopped dismayed as he saw his mother's hand grope for her

handkerchief, and her face slowly crumple into misery.

"I did enjoy Bournemouth," he began, "but I just think a little while

with Grannie would be nice."

Dora burst into tears.

"Oh, Edwin," she sobbed, "oh, Edwin. This is a terrible blow to me.

You're all I've got, everything I do is for you, and now you say

you'd rather be with your Grannie than with me."

She sobbed on, as Edwin got up and came round to her end of the table.

"Of course I don't mean that," he said. "I'm awfully sorry, Mother;

I won't go if you don't want me to, but of course it would be rather

decent there."

"This is my reward. This is what comes of all my devotion to you.

Oh, Edwin, I didn't think you could have hurt me so."

"But I've said I won't go. I can't help wanting to, but I've said I

won't and I don't see why that hurts you."

Dora dried her tears and took his hand.

"Oh, my dear," she said, "you'll never know what pain a mother feels

when her child wants to leave her. But when I'm dead you'll be glad

you offered to stay." She put away her handkerchief and added

heroically. "You may go, Edwin; I like you to do what makes you

happy."

Edwin's face brightened.

"May I really, Mother? Thanks most awfully; I'd love it. Do you

think I may go to-morrow?"

Dora Greene looked pained, but only answered in a fading voice:

"Yes, Edwin, you may go to-morrow," and left the room.

Edwin felt a little damped, but when he sat down to write to Mrs.

Greene that he would arrive the following day, his spirits rose again.

His mother was out for lunch, so he ate it alone, and afterwards went

for a solitary walk, elated to think that there would be no more

hanging about in London with nothing to do. The ten days before

school began stretched pleasantly ahead and as he came quietly into

the drawing-room for tea, his cheeks flushed with walking, he looked

a happy, carefree, small boy.

Mrs. Pratt was sitting on the sofa beside his mother.

"How do you do, Edwin?" she said gravely, "your poor Mother's just

been telling me how upset she is."

Edwin looked both surprised and concerned.

"What's wrong?" he asked.

Mrs. Pratt looked at him reproachfully and shook her head slowly from

side to side as she said:

"Oh, Edwin. To think you've forgotten already how you grieved her

this morning."

"Don't say anything more," interrupted Dora, smiling bravely. "I

suppose it is weak of me to be so hurt, and since Edwin wants to go

and leave me, he must just do it."

"Listen to your mother," urged Mrs. Pratt admiringly. "Never

thinking of herself, always planning for your happiness, and then see

if you've the heart to go against her wishes."

Edwin felt that he had been treated with some sort of subtle

treachery. His brows were drawn into a scowl, and he looked sullen

and resentful as he said stubbornly:

"I don't know what you mean. I told Mother I wouldn't go to Grannie

if she didn't want me to, but she said I might, and I've written and

now I'm going."

He half turned away but Mrs. Pratt laid her hand on his arm as her

voice went on gently:

"That action was so like your wonderful mother, dear boy. You're all

she's got and yet she'll sacrifice herself to let you go if you want.

Now don't you think you could make a little sacrifice for her and

stay at home?"

Edwin kicked the leg of the tea table and fidgeted with his hands,

but he did not answer.

"You see it's no use," said Dora bitterly. "He'll do nothing for me;

better say no more."

She poured out tea, clattering the china in her nervous annoyance.

Mrs. Pratt began again:

"Oh, Edwin, dear, I'm sure you don't mean to be unkind----" but Edwin

interrupted her rudely. His mouth was shaking, but his voice was

quite steady.

"It isn't fair," he said passionately. "It isn't fair of Mother to

begin at me again. She shouldn't have told you anything about it. I

said I'd do what she wanted, but it was all arranged that I could go

and now she's gone and raked it all up again with you. But I'm going

all the same."

He stopped confusedly, and became aware of his mother moaning gently:

"Oh, Edwin, oh, Edwin!" Mrs. Pratt was repeating in her amazement.

"Well, I'd never have believed it; I'd never have believed it."

"Believe what you like," Edwin addressed her distractedly and turned

to his mother. "Don't go on saying 'Oh, Edwin'," he shouted. "I

hate my name; I hate everything."

He ran from the drawing-room, and Mrs. Greene subsided into tears.

"My poor Dora," said Mrs. Pratt soothingly. "My poor, dear Dora,

what a terrible afternoon. I know how sensitive you are, and how you

must suffer from such a scene."

"Indeed I do. Nothing could be more unlike me. But what can I do?

My son's been taken from me by his grandmother. I'm powerless

against her."

"It's shocking, really shocking, and especially when you've got

nobody but him."

"I've always been lonely; I've had very little happiness since I was

a girl. When I look back to my old home and then think of what I've

suffered since I left it, I often wonder I've lived so long."

"You're wonderful, Dora; always so brave, always putting the best

face on things."

"I do try," said Dora beginning to brighten, "But oh how difficult it

is when Edwin behaves to me like this."

"I don't think you should worry. I'm sure it must be Mrs. Greene's

influence. No boy of his age could possibly behave like that unless

his mind was being poisoned."

"Do you really think so?" asked Dora with interest.

"I do," said Mrs. Pratt, dropping her voice to a mysterious note.

"And I really think you ought to work out some scheme to prevent it."

"But what can I do?" There was pause, and then Mrs. Pratt spoke

triumphantly.

"I know, Dora. I've thought of the very idea. You must let him go

this visit, and then towards the end of next term you must write and

say you're not at all well, and the doctor is very anxious about you

and says that you must be spared all worries and troubles."

"But I'm quite well," said Dora limply.

"Yes, of course, I know you are, but don't you see? It's a real

opportunity for you if you do that. He can't go and stay with the

old woman if your heart is weak, and gradually you can get him away

from her influence."

"I'll do anything for Edwin. You know that, Violet. I'll make any

sacrifice for him; anything to free him from this terrible effect his

grannie is having on him."

Dora spoke earnestly, beginning to believe under the spell of Mrs.

Pratt's suggestion that Mrs. Greene was indeed exercising a malign

influence on her son.

The plot to rescue Edwin was gradually evolved in all its details,

but it was never carried out.

Early in November, Dora received a telegram that sent her straight to

Waterloo, and thence--after a hideous hour of waiting for a

train--down to Edwin's school, where she was greeted by his pale and

anxious-looking headmaster.

"I have very bad news for you," he said. "I find it utterly

impossible to express my regrets and sympathy."

"Is Edwin alive?" asked Dora Greene steadily.

"Yes, he is alive," answered Mr. Foster. "But the doctor has seen

him and the spine is severely injured. He is quite unconscious."

"Will he live?"

Dora Greene, to whom tears came so easily, was dry-eyed and stony as

she asked the question and listened to the answer.

"Only for a few hours. He may regain consciousness before the end."

"Tell me exactly how it happened, please."

"It appears that this morning during the recreation half-hour, Edwin

and another boy were so foolish as to dare each other to walk round

the gymnasium roof on the coping that you can see from here." Mr.

Foster moved over to the window as he spoke. Mrs. Greene followed

him and stood looking at the long, high building jutting out from the

side of the house.

"Is that the coping?" she asked, "where that bird is?" A pigeon was

walking jerkily along the narrow ledge, stopping every now and again

to nod its head with meaningless little movements.

"Yes, that's it. I need hardly tell you that it is absolutely

against the rules to do so, and indeed no boy has ever before made

the attempt. Edwin was to go first. He climbed out through a

dormitory window, up a sloping piece of roof and from that on to the

coping. He walked quite steadily the full length of the building,

but at the corner the boys think he looked down and got dizzy.

Anyhow he fell."

Mr. Foster stopped for a moment. His voice was husky as he continued:

"I was there in a few minutes; the matron too, but he was quite

unconscious. When the doctor came we moved him into a ground-floor

room, and the doctor fitted up a bed and made his examination."

Mr. Foster looked desperately at the silent woman confronting him and

said again:

"I cannot tell you Mrs. Greene, what this means to me. It's the most

tragic thing that has happened in all my school career."

"I should like to see Edwin now, please," said Mrs. Greene, and was

taken to the class-room where Edwin lay, his eyes closed, his rosy

face pale and drawn, on an improvised bed.

The matron who was sitting beside him, rose and offered her chair to

Mrs. Greene who sat down, still silent. All through the evening she

sat there, gazing unflinchingly at the small figure on the bed. The

doctor came in and spoke to her, but she did not answer. Food was

brought on a tray, but she refused it. The matron sat opposite her

on the other side of the bed, occasionally moving a pillow or bending

down to listen to the child's uncertain breathing.

Towards eleven o'clock Edwin's heavy eyelids lifted and he looked

vaguely at his mother.

"I didn't know you were here, Mother," he said uninterestedly.

"I've just come to see you, darling," said Dora Greene stooping to

kiss him.

"Am I ill?" he asked.

"Yes, Edwin, you've had a bad accident."

Presently he asked, still passively:

"Am I going to die, do you think?"

"You've hurt yourself rather badly, dear," his mother answered and

could not keep a tremor from her voice. He lay still with closed

eyes. At the first sign of consciousness the matron had hurried from

the room. She now came back with the doctor, who lifted Edwin's hand

to feel his pulse and then laid it gently back on the coverlet.

Suddenly Edwin opened his eyes.

"I say, Mother," he said, with more animation than he had shown, "if

I'm going to die, I'd awfully like to smoke a cigarette first."

Dora looked at the doctor, who shook his head. She stood up and drew

him a little aside.

"Give me a cigarette," she said in a savage undertone. "Give me one

at once; it can make no difference."

"I hardly think----" he began helplessly. But she interrupted, still

in an undertone of concentrated intensity.

"Give me it at once; I insist."

The doctor handed her his case. She took out a cigarette.

"There, darling," she said to Edwin, and her voice was soft again.

"Look, I'll put it in your mouth for you and light it."

The doctor gave her a match and she held the little flame steadily to

Edwin's cigarette. He drew in a breath and choked a little.

"It's ripping," he said thickly. "Thanks awfully, Mother." His

eyelids fell again and the cigarette dropped from his flaccid lips.

With a little choking sigh, Edwin Greene died.

Mrs. Greene stood still, but in a moment the doctor took her arm.

"He's gone, Mrs. Greene; poor little chap. Will you come away now?"

But with a loud moan Dora Greene fell on her knees and subsided in a

passion of tears over the body of her son.

"He's gone," she cried, "gone, and he never loved me. First his

father took him from me, and then his grandmother, and now he's dead

and I'll never have him."

For a moment both doctor and matron were taken aback by the sudden

change from rigid self-control to complete abandon, but as the sobs

turned into laughter and screams, both regained their composure.

With some difficulty they half led, half carried, Dora Greene to the

school sanatorium, where she passed the night between tears, hysteria

and passionate vituperations against the father and grandmother who

had robbed her of her son during his short life.

V

During the next few months Mrs. Pratt proved herself so willing a

confidante, so soothing and consoling a listener that Dora Greene

finally asked her to come and live with her.

The arrangement worked surprisingly well. Life settled into a

routine of gossip, bridge and tea-parties, broken only by a joint

summer holiday and an occasional week at Easter when Dora went to

stay with her father, now a widower, but still running his small

parish competently and successfully.

It was tacitly understood between the two ladies that when Mrs.

Greene had indulged in a long narrative embracing every sorrow and

grievance of her existence, she should pay for the luxury of having

an audience by performing that function in her turn.

Mrs. Pratt's saga confined itself to full details of her sufferings

at Mr. Pratt's hands during the months that preceded his departure

from this life in a violent attack of delirium tremens.

Mrs. Greene was already acquainted with the history of Mr. Pratt's

life and death, but it made good hearing none the less, and on the

other hand Mrs. Pratt particularly enjoyed the point in Mrs. Greene's

reminiscences at which handkerchiefs were brought out, and they

recalled what a happy, bright boy little Edwin had been.

"Those were happy days," Dora would sigh fondly. "I was a happy wife

and mother till death stole both my treasures."

"But you've been so wonderfully brave, dear," Mrs. Pratt would

murmur. "See how you've built up your life again."

"I have been lucky in having you to help me. I couldn't have done it

without you, Violet; you know how little use the Greenes have been to

me."

This was an immensely satisfactory opening. Violet Pratt, a solitary

woman except for her friendship with Dora Greene, enjoyed vicariously

the many slights and rebuffs which Dora considered that she endured

from her husband's relations.

By 1928 this list of slights had been added to by both Mrs. Rodney's

daughter-in-laws. Helen, Mrs. Geoffrey Greene had failed to call on

her Aunt Dora for nearly two years, and had moreover never once

invited her to a meal of any sort.

"Not even tea," said Dora acidly. "And you can hardly think that

would be too much trouble even in a small house."

"Indeed you can not," Mrs. Pratt answered warmly. "And especially

after the kind way you asked her to dinner as a bride."

But the most recent insult was naturally the most interesting.

At the wedding of Hugh and Jessica only three weeks ago, Mrs. Edwin,

arriving a little late when the bride was already in the church, had

been hustled into a back seat instead of being allowed to take her

place in one of the front pews with the rest of the family.

"Of course I don't really blame Jessica," said Dora, as she had

already said some twenty or thirty times during the last three weeks.

"But still, it just shows. Some arrangement should surely have been

made for me to take my proper place, and even if I was a little late,

well, I haven't a motor like some of the others."

"I expect it was all Mrs. Rodney's doing," suggested Mrs. Pratt

darkly.

Dora pounced on this.

"Do you really think so?" she asked eagerly. "Well, I wouldn't be

surprised at anything after the way she has always looked down on me

and put me on one side."

It was at this propitious moment that the maid brought in a letter at

which Dora exclaimed triumphantly:

"There now, talk of the Devil----"

She read the letter and handed it to Mrs. Pratt.

"Read that, Violet," she said. "Read it and tell me what you think

of it. I should have thought that even Edith might have remembered

that next week is the anniversary of little Edwin's death. Not the

actual day of course, but I should have thought that a different week

altogether would have shown more courtesy and consideration. She

knows I always keep these few days sacred to my memories."

Mrs. Pratt read the short letter.

"207 Sussex Square,

"November 12th.

"DEAR DORA,

"I hear that Aunt Sarah is to be in town next week when Hugh and

Jessica get home from their honeymoon, and I feel it would be nice

both for her and for Mrs. Greene to have a reunion with the young

people. There are six of us now, and my idea is to have a little

dinner-party next Friday night at 7.45, for the six Mrs. Greenes. I

do hope you will be able to come; both the old ladies are getting

rather frail now, and I think it would give them pleasure.

"With love from Rodney and myself,

"Your affectionate sister-in-law,

"EDITH GREENE."

Mrs. Pratt sniffed.

"I see," she said venomously. "I see, Mrs. Rodney makes it sound

like a treat for her mother-in-law, but I suppose its just to make

another opportunity for showing off."

"Of course it is," answered Dora angrily. "And what a cruel week to

choose. She can't have forgotten old Mrs. Greene's wickedness to my

poor little Edwin and yet she asks me to meet her almost on the

anniversary of his death. And I don't at all care about meeting Hugh

and Jessica after the way I was treated at their wedding."

"I should refuse if I were you, Dora."

"I've a good mind to do so. I should have thought even Edith would

have known better than to ask me to a party next week."

"Perhaps she doesn't mean you to accept."

"That's probably it, Violet. I believe you're right. She's chosen

that date purposely so that I shan't go. Well, she'll be

disappointed for once. I'll go. I'll write this minute and tell her

that I'll come but that I think she should have known better than to

ask me."

Dora Greene moved over to her desk.

"Come and help me, Violet," she said. "We must concoct a good

letter."

The two ladies sat happily down to accept with the maximum of

ungraciousness the invitation which would provide them for weeks to

come with a fruitful topic of discussion and complaint.