It was very hard to get Bobby to sleep that night. At last, however, he wearily subsided against Sophy's breast and, thumb in mouth, demanded "All a gees." This meant the old nursery song of "All the pretty little horses." Obediently she began to sing in her rich contralto that was like the flutes and viols of love, tempered to the inanity of the nursery rhyme. But though she sang and sang, it was after seven o'clock before the boy fell fast asleep. She dressed hurriedly for dinner, slipping into a tea-gown of dull orange that Cecil particularly liked. She had made up her mind to talk to him about his attitude towards Bobby. She wished it to be as quiet a talk as possible, so she put on the orange tea-gown to please him, and set in her hair some tiny, orange lilies that had been sent down from Dynehurst that morning. He liked her to wear flowers in her hair. But though she made these preparations, she was quite determined to face anything in the matter of having "her say out" about his relations with the boy. She had long realised, in silence, that there was a strong antagonism between father and son. It seemed terrible, but she knew that such things were. It had been the same between Cecil and his own father. But she would not have the child terrorised and herself treated with indignity because of Cecil's moods. No; not even his illness could make her put up with that. And she thought, with a hot wave of pain and shame, of the scene that Amaldi had just witnessed.
Chesney came in to dinner, rather late and very much excited. He began rattling politics to her. The damned government was going under. He'd give it two more years. Then, by Jove! he was going to cut in and give his Radicalism a fling! The Conservatives were pretty well played out; they'd been in just four years too long, confound 'em! 'Twas Kitty O'Shea had saved the Union for 'em, and none of those rotters in office. As a clever Irish Unionist had said, they ought to raise statues to Kitty O'Shea all over Ulster—and so on and so on.
Sophy listened pleasantly, putting in a word every now and then to show that she was really attentive. She was thinking all the time how pale his face was, and how dark and excited his eyes. This last was all the more noticeable, as of late his eyes had been so dull and faded looking. Now the pupils almost covered the iris. And she noticed, too, that, though he helped himself freely from every dish, he ate scarcely anything. This made her apprehensive. He was so much more apt to be irritable when he did not eat. Then he suddenly ordered a pint of champagne.
"Will you have some, too?" he asked her. "But you don't like it, do you?"
"Sometimes—when I'm thirsty. Not to-night."
"And just send another pint up to my room, Parkson. I shall read late to-night," he added, as an explanation to Sophy.
In the drawing-room after dinner he was very restless, roaming to and fro, smoking those great cigarettes, one after the other. He kept glancing at the clock. Sophy had drawn on a pair of long gardening-gloves and was peeling the stems of some roses. The butler had placed a great trayful of them on a low table before her, and as she peeled the long, thorn-armed stems, she arranged the roses in a crystal vase. They kept for days longer when stripped of their outer rind in this way. The tranquil monotony of her movements seemed to get on Chesney's nerves.
"For God's sake," he said finally, halting near her, "get through with that business and sing me something."
She sat down at once to the piano and sang some of Schumann's Lieder and soft, melancholy Russian folk-songs—the songs of a people bowed immemorially by oppression—almost in love with sorrow, as a prisoner comes to love his prison. She was glad that he had asked her to sing. Many a time had she played David to his Saul. Music, her singing especially, always softened him. Now it would be easier to talk with him of Bobby.
When she paused, he looked up at her from the chair in which he had stretched himself, his head sunk moodily forward. "By God! You're a sweet woman," he said.