"I'm sure it's a mistake to be sarcastic," Mary admitted. "I'm sorry, Mary. You know I find it quite difficult to call you Mary, because it's my own name. I really came this afternoon to try to effect a reconciliation. I'm anxious to be friends. It's useless to live in the past. We should all be miserable if we did that, for we all of us make mistakes. It struck me that it might be difficult for you and Geoffrey suddenly to re-enter the family circle—a very small circle nowadays. Only myself and Muriel. So, I didn't suggest that you and he should come and live at Woodworth Lodge or anything like that. But what I thought was that perhaps you might be glad to let me assume the responsibility for that little girl in the cot. If she was allowed to live with me, you would of course be coming to see her often, and then gradually we should get to know one another, and this gulf between us might be bridged."
"Never!" cried the mother. "I wouldn't let you have my Molly for nothing. Not if she was going to die the next minute. I'd sooner for her to die than have her go to you. I suppose you think I'm not fit to look after my own little gurl? Well, you've made a mistake, let me tell you. I'm as fit to look after her as what you are. She's mine. She's not yours. She never shall be yours, not while I'm alive anyway. I suppose you think I ought to be so proud because I've married a gentleman that I ought to sit still for the rest of my life with my hands crossed on my lap and do nothing. Only be proud. But I didn't marry Geoff because he was a gentleman. I married him because I loved him. I suppose you think a woman like me can't love? I suppose you think it's only ladies who can love? But that's just where you're wrong. I've loved him so much that I've been angry with myself for being so soft and carried on at him something cruel. You wouldn't have done that, would you? But I've nagged at him until he's been fit to jump into the lake, which is near where we were living at Hopkinsville. Only it isn't like a lake. More like a sea really. I suppose you think that I wouldn't dare to be jealous, just because I'd married a gentleman? I suppose you think I ought to have let him do just what he wanted? Not me. Why, he couldn't be half an hour late without I was ready to tear his eyes out to know where he'd been and what he'd been doing. I reckon sometimes he wished he'd never set eyes on me. But I loved him all the time. You needn't make no mistake about that. I've wished sometimes he'd beat me, but he never raised his hand to me. Not once. Though I've nagged him enough to make any man hit me, even though he might have been a gentleman. And then last year, when I'd given up all hopes of such things, my little Molly came along, and since she came I've been better with Geoff. I seemed to feel he belonged to me at last, because the kid's half him and half me, as I figure it out. And now you come along and want to carry off my Molly. Never. That's my last word. Never! Perhaps if you'd come along before my little girl arrived and wanted to carry off Geoff, I might have let him go. I was fond enough of him to do that, I believe. Once I'd thought it was really for his good. But now him and me has never been such friends, just because we've got the baby. Our baby. His and mine. Not yours, and she never will be."
The child whose future was at stake was disturbed by the clamor of her mother's voice and woke up shrieking.
Mary waited a moment or two in embarrassment, uncertain how to get herself out of the room. In the end she went away in silence.
When she reached home, she sat down and wrote to her daughter-in-law:
Woodworth Lodge,
Campden Hill, W.,
November 9, 1910.
Dear Mary,I am afraid that you misunderstood the spirit in which I paid you my visit to-day. I feel that you may have imagined that my proposal for you to let me assume the responsibility for Molly's future meant that the little girl would be taken away from you. What I intended was that she should be the means of bringing us all together again. Perhaps in a little time you will be able to look at the situation with less bitterness. I do so hope that you will. Please accept this check as a belated wedding present and
Believe me to be,
Yours affectionately,
Mary Alison.
To which she received the following answer from her daughter-in-law:
Dear Mrs. Alison,
Thank you for the check which I would rather not accept if you don't mind. I'm sorry I was rude when you came to see me, but I should only be rude again, and so it's better for you not to come.
Yours sincerely,
Mary Alison.
And from her son:
My dear Mother,
I'm afraid you will think us ungracious in the way we've received your kindness. I'm afraid that Mary allowed herself to give vent to a good deal of the resentment she has had ten years to accumulate.
I feel I ought to have written to you about poor Father's death, but for various reasons I was naturally a little shy of intruding myself at such a moment, which I'm sure you will understand. I expect you know that from time to time Father very kindly helped me with loans. I should like to be in a position to repay these, but that is impossible. However, I seem to be fairly well fixed up now in a job, and I would rather not incur any more obligations. It is better, I feel, that Mary and I should continue to lead a life apart from the rest of the family. Please do not think that I am giving way to a false pride in taking up this attitude. I do feel that I owe a duty to Mary as the mother of our little girl. I wish I was a better hand at explaining myself. But she would never fit into the sort of life she would have to lead if she were to be "adopted" now. You may say that she never would have fitted in. I do not wish to give the idea that I am reproaching you for the past, but I do believe that if that day you came to the hotel where we were staying you had welcomed her as a daughter you would have found her responsive. She has become hard during these ten years, because, poor little girl, she felt that she had spoilt things for me. She was becoming really quite difficult to manage in her moods until Molly was born. But now, thank God, we are quite happy together, and so long as I can keep my job I believe that we shall go on being happy. I very much fear, however, that if she felt that she was not considered good enough to bring up her baby she would sink back into her former state of resentment, and the peace which we now enjoy would be destroyed.
So please forgive me, dear Mother, for the way we have received your kind visit. I do often think about you and wish that things had gone differently. I want you to believe that it is very difficult for me not to come and see you. But I know that if I did I should be weak and try to persuade Mary to do what you want. And then there would be difficulties, and I am so tired of squabbles. I feel wretched at writing to you like this, but I've braced myself up to do it, and it's done.
Your loving son,
Geoffrey.