4
In sharp contrast with this austere enthusiasm for Edward Fairfield and his work, there flickered up in her heart a secret romantic compassion for the Honourable Richard Bunnard, that fair-haired, frank-eyed, simple-minded young man, whose nickname, Bunny, appeared even to the eye of affection so entirely suitable. For his youth and good nature, for his docility, for the irresponsible levity that even the Fairfield atmosphere could not entirely inhibit, and still more for the less definite charm he unconsciously exercised over her, Sheila conceived a liking that trembled sometimes dangerously on the verge of tenderness. She was stirred by his voluntary surrender of his personality into the grasping hands of Hypatia, the high-priestess of a new oracle, and trembled at the thought of his being immolated, a blood sacrifice, upon that godless altar. But, most of all, the memory of his music troubled the deep cool waters of her mind. She sought in him often, and sometimes for a fleeting instant found, the transfigured face of the violinist who had once laid his spell upon her.
She swayed for a while between these two magnetic points: Edward’s intellectuality and Bunny’s manifest need for being looked after; but if the one’s self-sufficiency sometimes repelled her the other’s comparative vacuity of mind no less tried her patience. With such an alternative, perhaps her womanhood would have urged her irresistibly towards Bunny, in spite of discouraging precedent, had not that youth remained unaware of her claim to be anything more exciting (and that was exciting enough, no doubt) than Hypatia’s friend.
‘If only he had Edward’s brains as well as his own niceness,’ Sheila said to herself; and humour compelled her to add, self-scornfully: ‘Well, what if he had? He’d perhaps be even more indifferent to me than he is now.’ And that would have been hard; for his absorption in Hypatia was so complete that he could even sing her praises in little solitary interviews with Sheila contrived for that very purpose.
‘Don’t you think she’s very clever?’ he said one day, incredulous of a hint of criticism.
‘I know she’s got wonderful brains,’ Sheila assured him. ‘But at present I believe they’re under a cloud. That sounds horribly dogmatic, I expect. But I really think Hypatia’s a little bit of a fanatic nowadays.’
He rebelled against that. ‘She’s an enthusiast, if you like.’
Sheila smiled. ‘Perhaps that’s all. I suppose fanaticism’s only the name we give to the other person’s enthusiasm.’
‘I must say she often puzzles me,’ admitted Bunny. ‘You know her very well, don’t you?’
‘Not so well as you do, I expect.’
‘Oh, but you were at school with her,’ he urged.
‘That’s five, six, seven years ago.’
‘Still....’ He ached to believe that Sheila out of the fulness of her knowledge of Hypatia could help him. ‘Do you think she’s capable of liking anybody?’
‘Liking?’ The clear inadequacy of the word arrested her.
‘Liking very much, I mean, don’t you see? It’s this way: supposing you wanted....’ He waited as if for her to help him out. But she rather pointedly didn’t. ‘She seems so aloof very often, don’t you think?’
To this mild proposition Sheila assented. ‘A little cold, you think, perhaps?’ She guided his stumbling feet thus far.
‘Cold, but not,’ he hoped, ‘incapable of—well, affection, as it were.’
Sheila agreed gravely that ‘incapable’ would be too absolute a word.
‘She is very fine-looking.’ He had the air of submitting this idea for her acceptation.
‘Fine is quite the right epithet,’ Sheila assured this incredible youth. ‘She has always been fearless; you can see that in her face. And she had a sense of humour once.’ To herself she added: ‘Am I so very maternal that he must confide in me?’
After a brief transitional hovering, when he was neither quite in Sheila’s company nor definitely out of it, he went away, no doubt to treasure all these things in his heart, leaving Sheila in a state that oscillated between amusement and a half-ashamed regret. And that night Hypatia, joining her friend in the spacious bedroom that they shared, displayed unwonted animation. Whether it was Bunny or the stirring in its sleep of old friendship that loosened her tongue, Sheila patiently waited to have revealed to her.
Hypatia was in a reminiscential mood. She sat on Sheila’s bed and talked of Selborne days, of feuds with Miss Fry, of Sheila’s Aunt Hester, and of what little she knew of Kay. She appeared rather to dwell on Kay. She called up once-familiar faces from the pit of oblivion and set them again speaking forgotten parts. And presently, without preamble, she remarked: ‘There’s more in Bunny than he allows to appear, don’t you think?’
‘Very likely,’ Sheila said, sleepily. ‘But you know him so much better than I.’
‘He’s ductile,’ said Hypatia, rather consciously selecting the word.
‘Too much so,’ Sheila ventured. ‘How beautifully he plays the violin. That night at the Folk Dancing he was wonderful.’
‘Yes. In his way he’s quite a genius. Though of course this musical glamour is not really healthy. It’s a kind of delusion, a magnetism. In Real Knowledge it doesn’t exist.’
‘He’s rather marvellous, your friend Bunny,’ Sheila said tritely, chilled by Hypatia’s eternal prosing.
‘He’s a very nice boy. But under mother’s thumb at present. I shall change that.’
Sheila shivered. ‘You! How?’
‘He proposed to me to-night.’
Sheila was dumbstruck for a moment. Then, ‘You’re very calm about it,’ she said. ‘Did you...?’
‘Not yet. But if I do accept him there’ll be a fine tussle with mother.’
‘Doesn’t your mother like him?’
‘Immensely. But mother has an inordinate appetite for affection. She’s like a spider with a fly. She won’t share him.’
‘How bitterly you speak!’
Hypatia loftily repudiated the suggestion. ‘Not at all. I’m merely stating a fact. You will see, if you’re here long enough.’
‘Poor Bunny!’ said Sheila.
‘Oh, don’t worry about him. I shan’t let mother gobble him up, you may be sure.’
‘I’m sure you won’t,’ Sheila replied, biting her lip. ‘You’ll marry him sooner than that.’
But irony was lost on Hypatia. ‘Mother shan’t have him,’ she reiterated.
5
Edward found the presence of another person distracting. The dictation of his book was soon abandoned, and he pursued his solitary way. Yet not solitary, for he was not unconscious that his solitude had been invaded, destroyed; and he was not yet sure whether he liked or resented the invasion. In spirit another walked by his side. For Sheila this book, child of his brain, became a living thing to be thought about with a reverent excitement. She was still enough of a child to find this making of books miraculous: it was like that creation of something out of nothing which the church attributed to God. The best of Edward went into his book, and Sheila was quick to remember this in his defence when vitality or humour seemed lacking in him. He worked with clocklike regularity. He wrote from nine till twelve-thirty. He resumed work, after lunch, at one-thirty and wrote till, at half-past four, some toast and tea was brought to him on a tray. For this refreshment he allowed himself twenty minutes, and for ten minutes he systematically did nothing. From five till seven was his final daily spell.
Seven o’clock released him from his self-imposed task. At half-past seven he dined with his family, and having dined was free to cultivate such social amenities as he did not utterly despise. He formed the habit of seeking out Sheila; he persuaded her to go for walks with him: strenuous almost racing walks, conscientious and concentrated exercise, essential to the maintenance of physical and therefore mental fitness. She, glad of an antidote for the daily dose of omniscience forced down her throat by Hypatia, welcomed this new friendship. She was a willing and intelligent listener; the quickness of her mind delighted him, and his appreciation evoked an answering delight in her. The variety and colour of her thinking, a habit she had of investing with emotion even the dry bones of argument, provided a foil for Edward’s exact logic. She took imaginative leaps in metaphysical speculation, while he plodded laboriously on from point to point, never retracing a step. They sharpened their wits against each other and felt marvellously stimulated by the process. And still it was of the book, and of cognate subjects, that he talked, in an unending torrent of discourse. He involved himself in sentences so prodigious that Sheila sometimes got lost in a labyrinth of phrases and subordinate clauses. More than once she felt rising in her a secret impatience; she even got to the point of contemplating the discontinuance of an intercourse that became daily more overpowering. Yet looking back, as the days passed, upon that vista of intimate, flushed, excited talk, she could not find heart to cut adrift from him; moreover, he had made her feel, not without a sense of her presumption, that she had somehow become necessary to his literary scheme. These enormously distended monologues of his helped him to clarify his thought, and her occasional interpolated criticism freshened his dialectic processes. She felt a certain responsibility for him.
Mrs. Fairfield observed this ripening intimacy with a curious admixture of benevolence and displeasure. One evening she came upon her son and Sheila sauntering in the garden together a few minutes before seven, and smiled at her guest with an inimical glint in her eye.
‘Sheila dear,’ she said bitter-sweetly, ‘you mustn’t take my son from his work.’
Sheila, flushing with resentment, could make no reply.
‘Mother,’ said Edward, neither hotly nor coldly, ‘you interrupt the thread of my argument.’
Mrs. Fairfield flashed a point of jealous fire at Sheila, who turned on her heel, biting her lips in vexation. She was astounded and ashamed by this momentary and involuntary revelation of a woman’s soul.
Edward followed her without an instant’s hesitation.
‘See you at dinner, mother,’ he said casually, over his shoulder.... ‘The matter is not quite so simple as that,’ he went on, speaking to the girl at his side. ‘The vitalist hypothesis has implications that lie deeper than that altogether, and that run, in my opinion, altogether counter to the ascertained facts of experience. Chemical analysis....’
Sheila let him ramble on, grateful that he took no notice of her evident embarrassment. She wished he had left her. She wanted to escape from the intolerable sense of having been delivered an insulting ultimatum, a warning, by Edward’s detestable mother. Yes, Edward’s detestable mother: that was how she thought of the woman in whose mien she had read ‘Hands off my property!’ Her instinct was to run away from the house and never return; but slowly, as Edward’s sentences gathered length and momentum, she came to regard such an action as merely melodramatic.
She cut one of his clauses in half by asking abruptly: ‘What did your mother mean by that?’
He was pulled up short, and left floundering.
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘I’m so sorry,’ said Sheila; ‘I’m very rude. I’m afraid I wasn’t listening. I was thinking of what your mother said. What makes her hate me so?’
‘Hate you! Dear me, no!’ he exclaimed. ‘You’re too sensitive. Mother is hurt because I give my confidence to you and not to her. Don’t worry about her. She’ll have to get used to it.’
‘Oh no, she won’t. I am going home to-morrow.’
‘To-morrow?’
‘I had already arranged to, you know,’ Sheila untruthfully assured him.
‘I hope you will stay longer,’ he said earnestly. ‘If mother has offended you she shall apologize. I’ll see to it.’
‘Pray do nothing of the kind. And let’s drop the subject.... Won’t you forgive my inattention and tell me what you were saying?’
They had by now reached a remote part of the garden, a part from which the house was hidden by a mass of sweet peas clustering over trelliswork. A rustic seat on the gravel path by the trim croquet-lawn invited them to rest.
‘By the way,’ he said, when they had sat down. ‘I’ve finished the magnum opus.’
‘Finished!’ she exclaimed, glowing with excited pleasure. ‘How fine! Aren’t you tremendously glad?’
‘It’s a relief,’ he admitted. ‘I shall take a week’s rest and then start the revision.’
She, exulting still in the accomplished work, could spare no thought for the revision.
‘How jolly to have finished! You didn’t tell me you were near the end?’
‘Ah, you’d forgotten then.’ He smiled indulgently. ‘I told you a fortnight ago that I should finish on the thirteenth of this month.’
She was suitably astonished.
‘You mean to say you knew to a day?’
‘I work on a programme, you see,’ he said, relishing her surprised admiration.
Now that the work was done he seemed to have time for human weaknesses. This unexpected boyish vanity made Sheila like him more than she had ever done before.
‘I suppose you’re pleased with yourself now!’ she mocked him gently.
‘Very!’ he confessed. They both laughed.
‘There was another thing that might have told you,’ he said. ‘I came out of my room before seven o’clock to-night. Have you ever known that happen before?’
‘You see, my watch had stopped,’ she explained. ‘So that is what your mother——’
‘Probably.’
‘Why didn’t you explain to her?’ she asked him.
‘I refuse to propitiate her,’ he said. ‘Besides, I wanted you to know first.’
She was silent.
‘Sheila,’ he said gently, ‘we could do such a lot together!’
She began to rise from her seat, but he placed on her knee a strong and strangely reassuring hand.
‘It’s a year since your last visit to us, isn’t it?’
Sheila found her voice, a very small voice now, and answered ‘Yes.’
‘Well, a year ago I made up my mind to ask you to marry me. Will you?’
There was a teeming silence. Sheila’s mind was in a whirl. There seemed something wanting in the richness of this moment, a disconcerting gap in the happiness that had come within her reach. But another feeling conquered. She looked at him with her heart in her eyes.
‘If I can help you.... Oh, Edward, I do want to help you!’
‘My dear!’ he said. He kissed her cheek in warm brotherly fashion. ‘We shall be very happy together, you and I.’ He took her hand in his.
For a moment they contemplated this prospective happiness without speaking. The gong summoned them to dinner.
Sheila accompanied Edward into the house with a numbed feeling in one corner of her mind. She could not banish a vague half-formed doubt that had crept into the heart of her new happiness. There was so much that was fine, so much that was bracing, about her relationship with Edward, and she told herself that this lurking discontent was mere perversity. A feeling of comradeliness struggled with a sense of chill. She was to be his friend, his wife, the partner of his life’s work; they were intellectually in tune: what more could she ask of life? What was this secret craving for tenderness, for romance, but a foolish lapse into the sentimental dreaming of her school-days? Edward offered her in abundance what that boy-lover Kay Wilton had been so conspicuously unable to offer: the sympathy of an alert mind. Sympathy and comradeship—were not these the fairest flowers of life? The rest were gaudy hothouse plants, nurtured in an artificial warmth and unable to endure the healthy rigours of continual daily intimacy.
She tried by such reflections to still the whispering voice within her; nevertheless she was not herself during dinner, and it was with a catch of the breath, afterwards, that she heard Edward announce their betrothal to his parents. Stated coldly, the compact had the terrifying air of something irrevocable. She controlled with effort an impulse to flee from the room.
Mrs. Fairfield was exclamatory and encouraging, and Mr. Fairfield vaguely echoed his wife’s expressions of pleasure. Mrs. Fairfield opened her plump arms and wrapped them round Sheila as though taking permanent possession of her.
‘My dear Sheila!’ she exclaimed. ‘A new daughter for me!’
From that capacious and efficient embrace Sheila emerged with a sense of having been rescued from a yawning gulf. The one thought in her mind was that she did not wish to be a daughter to Mrs. Fairfield. She felt that Edward’s mother would as readily take, if she could, the globe itself into that large embrace, and exult greedily in her newly-acquired property, like a child with a big ball that it may bounce to its heart’s content.
‘Now that is nice!’ said Mr. Fairfield. ‘Very pleasant arrangement indeed! Well, well!’
A diversion was created by the entry of Bunny. He tried to conceal an air of desperate purpose under the affectation of breeziness.
‘Hullo, by Jove!’ he exclaimed. ‘How are you, Mrs. Fairfield? How are you, sir? How do, Ted? And how are you, Miss Dyrle? Myself, I’m jolly fine. Thanks for kind inquiries.’
‘That’s a comfort anyhow,’ said Mrs. Fairfield grimly. ‘You seem a little upset.’
‘Upset! Me!’ cried Bunny. He calmed a little to add: ‘Bit excited perhaps. Got some news for you, Mrs. Fairfield.’
‘Ha!’ The light of triumph gleamed in Mrs. Fairfield’s eye. ‘You’ve agreed to be president of the Workers’ Federation after all.’
‘No, not exactly.’
‘You haven’t!’ Mrs. Fairfield became the picture of righteous indignation. ‘You refuse to do a little thing like that for me, when your name would be so valuable to us!’
‘It wouldn’t be fair to my father. He’s a bit old-fashioned, I dare say, but there it is. He can’t help being an earl. He makes rather a point of my not getting too deep in the movement.’
The Honourable Richard Bunnard stood on one toe and twirled once round to assure every one that he was perfectly at ease.
‘Please don’t fidget, Bunny, when you’re talking to me, even though I am only an old woman. Once again I ask you, and for the last time: will you do the right thing, the public-spirited thing?’
Bunny tried to soothe the exasperated lady.
‘My dear Mrs. Fairfield, I’ve already promised my father.’
The storm burst.
‘Your father! Fiddlesticks your father! Hypatia’s at the bottom of this!’
‘Don’t get excited, mother,’ urged Edward.
‘I will, I will,’ retorted his mother. ‘I’ve a perfect right to get excited. You young people, you’ve got hearts of stone. All the love we mothers lavish on you is nothing to you. Do we get any gratitude? Not a bit! Scorn, yes, plenty of it! Scorn of our grey hairs and our silly ways and our ignorance. But gratitude—the last thing in the world.... Some chit of a girl comes....’
Edward shrugged his shoulders in cold disgust.
‘Ah!’ exclaimed Mrs. Fairfield. There was an ominous pause. Her husband rushed towards her.
‘It’s all right, me dear. I’ve got you safe and sound. Sit down and have a bit of a rest.’
The afflicted lady sighed.
‘She’s going to faint,’ cried Mr. Fairfield. ‘Why didn’t you let her have her way, you young devils, you!’
‘Of course she’s going to faint,’ said Edward. ‘That is the last scene of the melodrama.’
Sheila watched the scene with a mixture of indignation and compassion. The indignation was short-lived: it died suddenly at sight of Edward’s complete detachment. He seemed utterly devoid of the filial sentiment that would have made allowances for his mother. For she was, after all, his mother, Sheila reflected. She had faced death to bring him into the world. He was flesh of her flesh, bone of her bone: for him she had spent herself, and he was still the centre of her life. Had Edward shewn anger, Sheila would have been wholeheartedly with him, but this cold disdain, this resolute refusal to be stirred a hair’s breadth either to pity or to wrath seemed to Sheila’s warmer heart almost inhuman, although it extorted from her an unwilling admiration.
‘I think I’d better clear out,’ said Bunny, moving towards the door. ‘Sorry to have been the cause of a disturbance.’
But Mrs. Fairfield’s recovery was as abrupt as her collapse had been. From the arm-chair into which her husband had placed her she urged the young man to stay.
‘Don’t go, Bunny. I’m better now. It was my son upset me, not you. Come and tell me your news?’
She spoke in a languid faded tone, the tone of one bearing bravely an immense burden of wrongs.
‘Well ...’ began Bunny nervously, glancing towards Sheila.
Edward, intercepting the glance, asked: ‘Are we de trop, Bunny?’
Mr. Fairfield intervened. ‘Edward and Miss Dyrle have just come to an understanding, Bunny.’
‘An understanding?’ asked Bunny.
‘Yes. Bit of sweethearting, you know.’
‘Really!’ cried Bunny, beaming. ‘I congratulate you. Well, that makes it easier for me. There’ll be a double event.’
‘A what?’ demanded Mrs. Fairfield, all the languor gone from her.
‘You see,’ Bunny explained, ‘I’m engaged to be married.’
‘Well I declare!’ said Mr. Fairfield. ‘Engaged! Why, everybody’s getting engaged. Time we set about it, mother, eh?’
Edward made a congratulatory noise. Only Mrs. Fairfield was silent, watching Bunny with feline intentness.
‘Well,’ she said sharply. ‘Who’s the young lady, Bunny?’
Bunny, with his hands in his pockets agitating a bunch of keys, stood first on one leg and then on the other.
‘That was what I came for,’ he said, blushing, ‘to ask your blessing, don’t you know. You see, Hypatia....’
‘Yes,’ said Mrs. Fairfield curtly. ‘What about Hypatia?’
Even the amiable Bunny had not unlimited patience.
‘Hypatia?’ he said. ‘Well, nothing about her. You asked me who was the young lady. I’ve told you.’
‘Hypatia!’ demanded Mrs. Fairfield.
‘Exactly,’ answered Bunny, and strode out of the room.
‘Herbert!’ cried Mrs. Fairfield to her husband. ‘Go after him. At once. Hypatia shan’t have him. She shan’t!’
‘You’d better faint again, mother,’ remarked Edward.
‘Oh, Edward, how can you!’ cried Sheila, stung to speech.
She beckoned him to the bay window, as Mrs. Fairfield followed her husband to the door.
‘Edward,’ Sheila said, ‘are you sure you want me?’
He looked at her in surprise. ‘You know I do.’
Sheila felt that her question needed an apology. ‘It’s only that I hate to cause a fuss. Your mother does loathe me, I’m sure.’
He took both her hands in his for a moment. ‘Sheila, you’re not going to forsake me, are you?’
‘Not ... if you really care,’ she answered in a low voice.
Mrs. Fairfield from the passage stepped back into the room.
‘Children!’ she muttered, regarding the lovers with malevolence, ‘children ... no, vipers!’
Her husband returned, followed by Bunny wrapped in his dignity and by Hypatia armed with invincible placidity.
‘Now understand this,’ began Mrs. Fairfield. ‘We old folk refuse to be ignored. We just won’t put up with this insulting behaviour. You think we don’t count, but we’ll see. Bunny, let’s hear no more of this nonsense about marrying Hypatia. You shall not marry her. You’re a young snob. And Sheila shan’t marry my Edward either. I won’t be robbed of my children by young stuck-up creatures who despise me and my husband because we’re in trade.’
‘What a wicked lie!’ exclaimed Sheila, with flashing eyes. ‘You know we don’t despise you! Everybody’s parents are in trade ... except Bunny’s, I suppose.’
‘Herbert!... Edward! Will you stand here and hear this girl call your mother a wicked liar?’
‘Where do you want me to stand?’ enquired Edward. ‘Besides, I’m not Sheila’s controller. I’m not even her parent.’
‘You will leave my son alone,’ said Mrs. Fairfield, struggling with her rising passion. ‘Marry the Honourable Richard, if you want to marry.’
‘But that would still leave Edward and Hypatia unmarried,’ objected Bunny, lapsing into weak humour. ‘They can’t marry each other, you know.’
‘And you leave Hypatia alone!’ Hypatia’s mother turned upon Bunny. ‘I’ll make father disinherit them both if they disobey me.’
‘Is that all you have to say, mother?’ asked Hypatia, with the patient smile of the Christian Scientist.
‘No, it is not....’
‘Well, it’s quite enough,’ Hypatia assured her. ‘Come along, Bunny. Come and buy the licence.’
Without a word, the young man followed Hypatia out of the room.
The flame of battle was awake now in Sheila’s heart, burning away all lingering reluctance, all doubts and fears. If there was to be a feud, there was no doubt upon which side she would fight. Age had declared war upon Youth, and all the spirit in her woke to the challenge. Edward, her comrade, was being threatened with disinheritance. Sheila knew now that she was irrevocably his: a hint of doubt would have been shameful treason. She forgot the cold formality of his attitude to his mother: she remembered only his strength, his glorious unyielding strength.
‘Look here, mother,’ Edward was saying, ‘you’ll have to readjust your ideas a little.’ He waved aside a hysterical interruption. ‘No, it’s no use indulging in heroics: your storming only makes me tired. Storm in a teacup, that’s all. Listen to me.’
Mrs. Fairfield turned her back on him.
‘Yes, listen like that, if you wish. It’s extraordinarily rude, but never mind. I was saying that you’ve got to readjust your ideas a little. They’re about a hundred years behind the times. We young people, as you call us, have as much right to live as you, and as much right to freedom.’
His mother wheeled round swiftly. ‘Freedom! You’ve had too much freedom!’
‘Please don’t interrupt,’ said Edward. ‘There’s been quite enough shouting and stamping. I want you to reason the thing out calmly. Freedom consists in being left alone, left with room to grow, not in being penned round with affection and told every minute of the day that of course we can do as we like if we don’t love mother and father.’
‘You’re hitting too hard,’ whispered Sheila.
‘You think,’ Edward continued, ‘because you’ve born and bred us and sacrificed yourself for us that Hypatia and I belong to you.’
‘Oh no, you don’t belong to me,’ said Mrs. Fairfield in fierce sarcasm. ‘I’m only your mother: that’s all.’
‘Precisely,’ said Edward. ‘Our mother, not our owner. We belong to nobody. We have our separate lives to live, and we intend to live them in our own way.’
‘You’re mine, mine, mine!’ protested his mother. ‘Don’t you feel any common gratitude for what I’ve done for you? I gave you life; I fed you with my body; and now—is this the end?’
‘Those are services that cannot be repaid,’ he answered, without any trace of emotion. ‘If in return for what you did for me I had to submit to be your doll for ever, it were better that I had not been born at all.’
‘Brutal, brutal!’ interjected his father, waking from a spell of bewilderment.
‘Perhaps,’ conceded Edward, ‘but it’s nature. Nature is brutal. Do you think that because you gave me life, as you say, that you have the right to take it away, or smother it, or confine it, at your pleasure? You shut your eyes to logical inference. See to what absurd conclusions your wild unreasoning would lead you if you dared follow it to the end. Time and again civilization has been hindered in its march....’
For a moment Sheila ceased her loyal silent applause to ask herself: Why does Edward talk like a parliamentary candidate? But Mrs. Fairfield quickly distracted her attention from that question.
‘I see,’ she said, ‘I’m nothing to you. I’m only your mother. This bit of a girl, who’s done nothing for you, whom you’ve known ten minutes, is more to you than your mother is.’
Edward assented gravely. ‘So much more than I propose to live with her and not with you. You were a bit of a girl yourself once, mother. If father had been more devoted to his mother than to you, you might have been a childless spinster at this moment.’
‘Now then,’ said Mr. Fairfield, briskly asserting himself. ‘We’ve had about enough of this. Mother’s had her say. And you’ve had yours. You’ve got the gift of the gab all right. Now just you cut along and leave your mother alone.’
‘Herbert, he shan’t have a penny of your money!’ Mrs. Fairfield turned confidently to her husband for ratification of this threat. ‘Tell him so.’
‘We’ll see. We’ll see. I’m not dead yet,’ said the little man, with unwonted independence. ‘I hadn’t any pennies myself when I was his age.’
His wife turned upon him a terrible Et tu Brute look.
‘Never you mind,’ he retorted, with incredible courage. ‘There’s sense in what the lad says, even though he is a bit of a hard nut. Gets that from his father perhaps.’
‘His father!’ cried the mother in scorn. ‘They’re their mother’s children, both of them. Else they’d never dare to treat me like this.’
There was pride as well as anger in the glance she flashed at Edward as she gathered up her skirts and rustled out of the room.