“I’m sure you must be longing to see her.”
And when he had gone, she sat for a little while in front of the unwashed tea things, thinking how hard it was that a mother should have to yield her son to another woman.
She need not have. Roland, at the moment when she was thinking of him with melancholy regret, was far from being “dissolved in pleasure and soft repose.” He was sitting, as he had so often sat before, on the chair beside the window-seat, in which April was forlornly curled, while Mrs. Curtis expressed, to complete his depression, her opinion on the economic situation in Europe. Soon she abandoned these matters of high finance and reverted to simple matters of to-day—namely, her son and her daughter. It was “dear April” and “dear Arthur”; and Roland was reminded vividly of a bawdy house in Brussels and the old woman who had sat beside the fire, exhibiting her wares. That was what Mrs. Curtis was at heart. He could see her two thousand years earlier administering in some previous existence to the lusts of Roman soldiery: “Yes, a dear girl, Flavia; and Julia, she’s nice; and if you like them plump Portia’s a dear, sweet girl—so loving. Dacius Cassius said to me only yesterday....” Yes, that was what she was, and beneath her sentimentality how cold, how hard, how merciless, like that woman in Brussels who had taken eighty per cent of the girls’ money. He was continuing to draw comparisons with a vindictive pleasure when he observed that she was collecting her knitting preparatory to a move.
“But I know you two’ll want to be together. I won’t be a troublesome chaperon,” she was saying; “I’ll get out of your way. I expect you’ve lots to say to each other.”
And before Roland quite knew what was happening he was alone with April. He turned towards her, and as her eyes met his she blushed a little and smiled, a shy, wavering smile that said: “I am here; take me if you want me, I am yours”—a smile that would have been to anyone else indescribably beautiful, but that to Roland, at that moment, appeared childish and absurd. He did not know what to say. He was in no mood for protestations and endearments. He could not act a lie. There was an embarrassing pause. April turned her face away from him. He said nothing, he did nothing. And then very distinctly, very slowly, like a child repeating a lesson:
“Did you have a good crossing?” The tension was broken; he began to talk quickly, eagerly, inconsequently—anything to prevent another such moment. And then Mrs. Curtis came back and the conversation was monopolized, till Roland reminded her that it was seven o’clock and that he would have to be getting back.
“I haven’t seen my father yet.”
“Of course, of course. We mustn’t keep him, must we, April?”
Roland took his leave, but April did not, as was usual, follow him to the door. She remained huddled in the window-seat, and did not even turn her head in his direction. She was angry with him, and no doubt with good cause, he reflected; but Mrs. Curtis had gone so suddenly; he had been taken off his guard. Heavens! but what a home-coming!
He felt happier though next morning when he walked into the office of Marston & Marston. Everyone was pleased to see him back; the girls in the counting-house smiled at him. He was informed by the lift-boy that his cricket had been sadly missed during the latter half of the season, and Mr. Stevens literally leaped from his desk to shake him by the hand. It was ripping to see Gerald again, to come into his room and hear that quietly drawled: “Well, old son,” and resume, as he had left it, their old friendship.