§
‘Well, Mother?’ said Jocelyn, getting up as she approached.
He had been smoking, content to leave whatever it was Sally had been doing in his mother’s capable hands, yet wishing to goodness Sally hadn’t done it. This trick of wanting to be with servants must revolt his mother. It revolted him; how much more, then, his fastidious mother.
‘I can guess what it is, I’m afraid,’ he said, as she sat down beside him.
‘No,’ said Mrs. Luke. ‘You haven’t any idea.’
‘What has she been doing, Mother?’ he asked, seriously alarmed, and throwing away his cigarette.
‘Salvatia? Nothing. Nothing that matters, poor dear child. It’s not about her I want to talk. It’s about Mr. Thorpe.’
‘Mr. Thorpe?’
‘Yes. Abergeldie. That’s Mr. Thorpe’s. That’s why you are going there—because it is Mr. Thorpe’s.’
‘But why should we——?’
‘Now Jocelyn,’ she interrupted, ‘please keep well in mind that Mr. Thorpe is the most absolutely reliable, trustworthy, excellent, devoted man. I can find no flaw in his character. He is generous to a fault—really to a fault. He has a perfect genius for kindness. Indeed, I can’t tell you how highly I think of him.’
Jocelyn’s heart went cold and heavy with foreboding.
There was a little silence.
‘Yes, Mother. And?’ he said, after a minute.
‘And he is rich. Very.’
‘Yes, Mother. And?’ said Jocelyn, as she paused.
‘When I got your first letter I was, of course, very much upset,’ said Mrs. Luke, looking straight in front of her.
‘Yes, Mother. And?’ said Jocelyn, for she paused again.
‘Everything seemed to go to pieces—all I had believed in and hoped for.’
There was a longer pause.
‘Yes, Mother. And?’ said Jocelyn at last, keeping his voice as level as possible.
‘I’m not a religious woman, as you know. I hadn’t got God.’
‘No, Mother. So?’
‘So I—I turned to Mr. Thorpe.’
‘Yes, Mother. Quite.’
The bitterness of Jocelyn’s soul was complete. A black fog of anger, jealousy, wounded trust, hurt pride and cruellest disappointment engulfed him.
‘Why not say at once,’ he said, lighting another cigarette with hands he was grimly determined should be perfectly steady, ‘that you are going to marry him?’
‘If it hadn’t been for your marriage it never would have happened,’ said Mrs. Luke.
‘Quite,’ said Jocelyn, very bitter, pitching the newly-lit cigarette away. ‘Oh, quite.’
Sally again. Always, at the bottom of everything, Sally.
Then he thought, ashamed, ‘My God, I’m a mean cur’—and sat in silence, his head in his hands, not looking up at all, while his mother did her best to make him see Mr. Thorpe as she wanted him to be seen.
In her low voice, the low, educated voice Jocelyn had so much loved, she explained Mr. Thorpe and his advantages, determined that at this important, this vital moment she would not allow herself to be vexed by anything Jocelyn said.
He, however, said nothing. It simply was too awful for speech—his mother, who never during his whole life had shown signs of wanting to marry, going now, now that she was at an age when she might surely, in Jocelyn’s twenty-two year old vision, be regarded as immune, to give herself to a complete stranger, and leave him, her son who needed her, God knew, more than ever before, to his fate. That he should hate this Thorpe with a violent hatred seemed natural. Who cared for his damned money? Why should Sally—his mother kept on harping on that—be going to be expensive? As if money, much money, according to what his mother was saying, now that Sally had come on the scene, Sally who was used to being penniless, was indispensable. Masters? What need was there for masters? His mother could teach her. Clothes? Why, whatever she put on seemed to catch beauty from her—he had seen that in the shop in London where he bought the wrap: every blessed thing the women tried on her, however unattractive to begin with, the minute it touched her body became part of beauty. And how revolting, anyhow—marriage. Oh, how he hated the thought of it, how he wanted now beyond anything in the world to be away from its footling worries and complications, away from women altogether, and back at Cambridge, back in a laboratory, absorbed once more in the great tranquil splendours of research!
‘He is in the sitting-room,’ said Mrs. Luke, when she had said everything she could think of that she wished Jocelyn to suppose was true.
‘Who is?’ said Jocelyn.
‘Ah, I was afraid you would be angry,’ she said, putting her hand on his arm, ‘but I hoped that when it was all explained you would understand, and see the great, the immense advantages. Apparently you don’t, or——’ she sighed—‘won’t. Then I must be patient till you do, or will. But Mr. Thorpe is waiting.’
‘Who cares?’ inquired Jocelyn, his head in his hands; and it suddenly struck Mrs. Luke that Mr. Thorpe was waiting very quietly. The five minutes must have been up long ago; she must have been sitting there quite twenty, and yet he hadn’t come after her as he had threatened. Knowing him, as she did, for a man absolutely of his word, this struck her as odd.
‘Dear Jocelyn,’ she said, remembering the fits of dark obstinacy that had at times seized her boy in his childhood, and out of which he had only been got by the utmost patience and gentleness, ‘I won’t bother you to come in now and see Mr. Thorpe. But as he is going to be your host to-night——’
‘He isn’t,’ said Jocelyn, his head still in his hands, and his eyes still fixed on the grass at his feet.
‘But, dearest boy——’
‘I decline to go near him.’
‘But there’s positively no room here for you both——’
‘There’s London, and hotels, I suppose?’
‘Oh, Jocelyn!’
She looked at him in dismay. He didn’t move. She again put her hand on his arm. He took no notice. And aware, from past experiences, that for the next two hours at least he would probably be completely inaccessible to reason, she got up with a sigh and left him.
Well, she had told him; she had done what she had to do. She would now go back to Mr. Thorpe.
And she did go back; and opening the parlour door slowly and gently, for she was absorbed in painful thought, she found Mr. Thorpe sitting on the sofa, busily kissing Sally.