“Oh, my poor boy, can’t you see that all this is the result of the life you have chosen!” She would have liked to make a more direct reference to her religious belief, but feared to do so. She had learnt by this time that her son and she had no common ground in that direction. “Why—why don’t you leave that wicked woman, and start a new life? She is ruining you, body and soul.”
Alistair frowned impatiently.
“I can’t let you say that, mother. It’s not her fault, Heaven knows! The poor little thing has tried to do her best for me. She is a great deal better than some of your good women, who would draw their skirts aside if they passed her in the street.”
He spoke roughly, but not disrespectfully.
The Duchess sighed heavily.
“My unhappy boy, you know nothing about good women. You never meet them; you might be a different man if you did. If I could only bring you under the influence of some really good, devoted girl, such as I know”—a name rose to the Duchess’s lips, but she deemed it wiser not to pronounce it at that moment—“who would love you well enough to overlook the past, she might redeem you even now.”
Alistair sighed, too, at the picture called up by his mother’s words. He thought of poor little neurotic Molly, with her spasms of utter wretchedness, her hysterical fits, her occasional drunken outbreaks in which all the gutter in her blood came to the surface; he thought of her perpetual, feverish craving for excitement, of her secret hatred of his intellectual pursuits, of their ill-managed, disorderly household, with insolent servants going and coming every month. And then he contrasted the portrait with that of some sweet and gracious maiden—such a girl as his mother must have been in her youth—who would bring peace into his life, whose presence would be soothing as the sound of church bells heard at evening across the autumn fields, who would guide and rule their home through happy years of wedded friendship. Alistair sighed.
His mother heard and drew courage from the sigh. Already her mind was busy in working out a scheme for her boy’s salvation. Her eagerness led her to make a false step at the outset.
“If you will go away even for a short time I shall feel happier,” she pleaded. “Won’t you try to separate yourself from this woman? If you like to go abroad I could come with you, perhaps. You have often said that you should like to visit Rome?”
Alistair shook his head stubbornly.