III
Throughout the morning Margaret looked forward to her encounter with Ordith with that mixture of passivity and restlessness which alternately lulls and excites the sensitive boy who, something of a hero among his schoolmates, awaits his flogging. After breakfast Ordith and her father disappeared; after lunch they disappeared again. She and her mother, possessed by a common thought which neither would express, faced each other in a silence that was half-nervous, half-determined.
Early in the afternoon her mother complained of a headache, and went to her room.
“You might have my tea brought up to me, Margaret.”
“Poor mother!” Margaret thought. “She’s hoping that I am going to be sensible. Ought I to tell her I am going to be sensible—just to set her mind at rest?”
But she did not move. She let the silence of the room close round her. Presently, after many hours it seemed, the door of her father’s room opened and shut, footsteps sounded in the hall, and Ordith entered.
“Alone?” he said.
It was strange that she felt so calm, so decided, so completely mistress of herself. A twist of annoyance because he asked so unnecessary a question—that was all.
“Are you ready for tea?” she asked.
“Indeed I am.”
“So you lay aside the burdens of state. Is father coming?”
“I expect he is.”
“I don’t,” she said, under her breath. Then, aloud: “I’ll go and ask him. You might ring.”
She looked into her father’s room. He was sitting by his desk, a spiral of blue smoke rising from the ash-tray at his side.
“Tea, father?”
“Yes, you might send in a cup to me. No milk, no sugar, and strong, doushka. I’m dead tired.”
He had used the Russian word which had been his pet name for her in the nursery, which she could not remember his having used since she was a child. She went to him and stood by his chair, wishing she could love him.
“You are not ill, father?”
“No—no.”
“I think you ought not to work so much. Surely you have earned a rest?”
“I couldn’t retire, darling. You don’t understand.”
“I’m beginning to understand—how it holds you. Couldn’t—wouldn’t it be possible, father, for you to throw your mind back to the old days and what seemed worth while then?”
“We are not young twice,” he said, trying to laugh.
“No ... but that’s true of the young as well as of the old.”
He would not understand her. She withdrew a pace from him and steeled herself.
“You want me to marry Nick,” she said, and went on: “You know what it means, and that he doesn’t love me. And you know what that means.”
“I think he does love you.”
“Physically.... I’m going to say it, father. I’m going to be straight this once.... A girl can tell what a man’s thinking about her. And if it’s ... what Nick thinks ... it’s like being stripped—there—in the middle of the room.” When her breath came more evenly, she said: “And when you think that the girl was once a little child extraordinarily in touch with Christ, made for sunshine and flowers, and warm affection—almost a part of Him, wondering for the first time about stars and distances, and so—without fear—about death, and love, and time——” She broke off. “That’s the chance, the raw material of the spirit. And then fear creeps in, and the craving for power—they creep into the nursery. We start compromising because others compromise; we are cruel in self-defence, evil for the sake of good—and our motives are confused until we don’t know what’s right or wrong. Our seeing of Christ is out of focus, and we talk—honestly as honesty goes—of a man’s being ‘too Christian,’ of ‘adapting Christianity to the needs of the day.’ And so at last I don’t think badly of you for wanting me to go—in there.” She made a gesture towards the room where Ordith was. “I make excuses for you. It seems quite reasonable. And, more amazing, you don’t think badly of me for consenting.... Yes,” she added, meeting his quick glance, “I do consent. You needn’t worry.”