“She has hardly been with us long enough to expect that. Irregularity is so unsettling to a child, too. I hope you will be unselfish enough to leave Cecil here, Rose, while you pay your visit.”
Lady Aviolet fixed her pale eyes upon Rose as she spoke, and they expressed melancholy, in the very slight degree in which their flaccid shallows ever expressed anything.
“I am Cecil’s grandmother, my dear, and so I am going to take upon myself to tell you that you are a very selfish mother to the boy. I see that you’re very fond of him—I quite see that—but you seem to have so little idea of the tremendous sacrifices that motherhood demands. Take this question of going away: you may say that you want Cecil with you, because you can’t bear to be away from him, but don’t you see that you’re only thinking of yourself? If you thought more of Cecil, and less of yourself, you’d see the folly and unkindness of disturbing and upsetting him by a change just when he is settling down to a regular routine for the first time in his little life. And London isn’t healthy for children like the country is. It won’t do him any good.”
Lady Aviolet’s implacable, unselfconscious certainty of the complete rightness of her own point of view daunted Rose curiously. Through her mind there floated, incoherently, words and phrases that should express her resentment. Difficulties—they always made difficulties—nothing was ever allowed to happen without these complications of argument, disapproval, condemnation ... things that ought to be simple, made difficult. It was tiring ... and it made one angry too. And how could any one decide that someone else was selfish, in that arbitrary way? But she was unable to formulate her thoughts in words, and stood shifting her weight from one foot to the other, like a schoolgirl that is being scolded.
At last she said in a sulky tone that might, equally, have emanated from the schoolgirl:
“I don’t see that at all. I’ve looked after Ces ever since he was born, and I suppose I know what’s best for him.”
She was angrily aware, as she spoke, of the futility of the assertion.
So, apparently, was Lady Aviolet.
“That is as it may be, my dear. And of course you will do as you think best. I can only advise you. But I should have thought that for little Cecil’s own sake, you might be willing to forget yourself. I hope I don’t expect to find old heads on young shoulders, but I should have thought you had seen enough of life to realize that we mothers have to sacrifice a great deal for our children. And they very often disappoint us at the end of it all. But at least there is the comfort of having done all one can.”
Rose, by an unwonted effort, repressed the retort that she longed to utter. If the self-sacrifice of their mother had been responsible for the ultimate evolution of the personalities of Ford and Jim Aviolet, her most ardent wish would be never to emulate such disastrous abnegation for the benefit of Cecil.