"I wish if you get a chance you'd tell them that they needn't do anything."
"They wouldn't take my word for it, or yours either. It rests with themselves and their own consciences."
"A good deal of it rests with me."
"Yes, if you were willing to take the first step; but since you're not—"
MRS. ANSLEY TOOK HIM AS AN AFFLICTION
They dropped it at that because Mrs. Ansley lilted in, greeting Tom with that outward welcome and inward repugnance he had had to learn to swallow. He knew exactly where he stood with her. She took him as an affliction. Affliction could visit the best families and ignore the highest merits. Guy, dear boy, was extravagant, and this was the proof of his extravagance. He was infatuated with this young man, who had neither means, antecedents, nor connections. She had heard the Whitelaw Baby theory, of course; but so long as the Whitelaws themselves rejected it, she rejected it too. The best she could do was to be philanthropic. Philip, Guy, Hildred, were all convinced that this young man was to make his mark. Very well! It was in her tradition, it was in the whole tradition of old Boston, to help those who were likely to get on. It was part of what you owed to your standing in the world, a kind of public duty. You couldn't slight it any more than royalty can slight the opening of bazaars. An aunt of her own had helped a poor girl to take singing lessons; and the girl became one of the great prima donnas of the world. Whenever she sang in opera in Boston it was always a satisfaction to the family to exhibit her as their protégée. So it might one day be with this young man. She hoped so, she was sure. She didn't like him; she thought the fuss made over him by Hildred and Guy, more or less abetted by their father, an absurdity; but since she was obliged to play up to the family standard of beneficence, up to it she would play. She bore with Tom, therefore, wisely and patiently, never snubbing him except when they chanced to be alone, and hurting him only as a jellyfish hurts a swimmer, by clamminess of contact.
Clamminess of contact being in itself a weapon of offense, Tom ran away from it, but only to fall into contact of another kind.
It was a cloudy afternoon with Christmas in the near future. All over town there were notes of Christmas, in the shop windows, in the Christmas trees exposed for sale, in the way people ran about with parcels. He never approached this season without going back to that fatal Christmas Eve when he and his mother had been caught shop-lifting. He could still feel as he felt at the minute when he turned his face to the angle of the police-station wall, and wept silently. He wondered what Hildred would think of him if he were to tell her that tale. He wondered if he ever should.