“So I have, but that was an accident.”
“Was it long since?”
“Well,” said Edwin, “you ought to know. It was when I brought that parcel for you.”
“Oh! Of course!”
Edwin was saying to himself: “She’s sent for him on purpose. She’s heard that we’re great friends, and she’s sent for him! She means to stop it! That’s what it is!” He had no rational basis for this assumption. It was instinctive. And yet why should she desire to interfere with the course of the friendship? How could it react unpleasantly on her? There obviously did not exist between mother and son one of those passionate attachments which misfortune and sorrow sometimes engender. She had been able to let him go. And as for George, he seldom mentioned his mother. He seldom mentioned anybody who was not actually present, or necessary to the fulfilment of the idea that happened to be reigning in his heart. He lived a life of absorption, hypnotised by the idea of the moment. These ideas succeeded each other like a dynasty of kings, like a series of dynasties, marked by frequent dynastic quarrels, by depositions and sudden deaths; but George’s loyalty was the same to all of them; it was absolute.
“Well, anyhow,” said he, “I shall come back here. Mother will have to let me.”
And he jumped down from the wall into Edwin’s garden, carelessly, his hands in his pockets, with a familiar ease of gesture that implied practice. He had in fact often done it before. But just this time—perhaps he was troubled by the unaccustomed clothes—having lighted on his feet, he failed to maintain his balance and staggered back against the wall.
“Now, clumsy!” Edwin commented.
The boy turned pale, and bit his lip, and then Edwin could see the tears in his eyes. One of his peculiarities was that he had no shame whatever about crying. He could not, or he would not, suffer stoically. Now he put his hands to his back, and writhed.
“Hurt yourself?” Edwin asked.