“You are too kind, sir; too kind.”
“Aufwiedersehn.”
“Aufwiedersehn.”
Hands were shaken, the door closed, and Roland was in the passage, the contract safe in his breast pocket.
With two such feats accomplished Roland should certainly have been returning home with a light heart. He would be praised and made much of. For at least a fortnight conversation would center round his exploits. His return was that of a general entering his city after a successful battle—a Roman triumph. But for all that he was dispirited. On his journey out he had experienced the exhilaration of freedom, and on his return he was obsessed by the gloom of impending captivity. To what, after all, was he coming back?—worries, responsibilities, the continual clash of temperaments. How fine had been the independent life of vagabondage that he had just left, where he could do what he liked, go where he liked, be bound to no one. There had been a time when the sights and noises of London had been inexpressibly dear to him. His heart had beaten fast with rapture on his return from Fernhurst, when he had watched the green fields vanish beneath that sable shroud of roofs and chimney-stacks. But now there was no magic for him in the great city through which he was being so swiftly driven. Autumn had passed to winter; the plane-trees were bare; dusk was falling; the lamp-lighter had begun his rounds. For many it was a moment of hushed wonderment, of peace and benediction, but Roland stirred irritably in the corner of his cab, and there was no pleasure for him in the effusive welcome his mother accorded him. He did his best to respond to it, but it was a failure, and she noticed it.
“What’s the matter, darling? Wasn’t it a success? Didn’t you do well over there?”
And behind her evident anxiety Roland detected, or fancied that he could detect, the suggestion of a hope that he had not done so well as he had expected to do.
“She would like to have comforted me,” he thought. “Her husband has been a failure; he has had to depend upon her and so she has kept his love. She would like me to be the same.” And this attitude, although he could understand it, exasperated him. He was aware that through his new friends he had become alienated from her, that she must be lonely now. But what would you? Life went that way.
They had tea together, and though Roland spoke amusingly and with animation about his experiences abroad, their talk was not intimate as it had been. There was nothing said behind and apart from their actual words, and Mrs. Whately imagined that he was impatient to see April.
As soon as they had finished tea she suggested that he should go round to her.