V
MORRIS SEVERING reappears in these pages, after an indifferently successful but lighthearted career at Oxford, not as a disappointed genius, but as an extremely good-looking young man, in love with life, with his own universal popularity, and with the goddess of music.
That he should seriously fall in love with a more earthly divinity was at once Nina’s hope and her terror. She watched the three little girls at Porthlew growing up rapidly, and spent the long vacations with her son abroad or in London. He was very little at Pensevern until the summer when Mrs. Tregaskis took Hazel and Rosamund to London.
Frances Grantham, only sixteen, and delicate, remained at Porthlew with Miss Blandflower “to keep Cousin Frederick company,” Mrs. Tregaskis told her.
Nina was not very much afraid that her son would fall in love with Frances. She was pretty, in a slender, classical style, but lacking in vitality, and though she came up to Pensevern and played tennis and, occasionally, golf, with Morris, she did so with the curious lack of conviction that was characteristic of her dealings with the material world.
From a psychological point of view Frances was infinitely more mature than Rosamund, passionate and unbalanced, or than Hazel, possessed of a sense of humour (which both sisters lacked almost completely), and charming withal; but Nina Severing, with great acumen, decided that only Frances could safely be promoted to the rank of “my little favourite.”
Her little favourite, being idealistic and impressionable, conceived a youthful adoration for Nina’s gentle tones, appealing prettiness, and tuneful graces, and refrained, with a completeness which spoke highly for Nina’s judgment, from transferring any of that adoration to Nina’s son.
As for Morris, it was enough that he once heard Frances Grantham, with transparent sincerity, observe that the modern music she liked best was Mrs. Severing’s highly successful setting of half a dozen nouveau genre lyrics, entitled “Underworld.”
“It’s rather odd that only one of them should have inherited the mother’s gift,” observed Nina thoughtfully, after this. “Of course she’s no performer, but that curious instinct for the right thing is absolutely inborn.”
“I didn’t know Rosamund was musical,” said Morris, purposely and viciously misunderstanding his parent, and moreover making it perfectly clear to that parent’s acute perceptions why he did so. She set her lips together and assumed the look of pale self-control that habitually prefaced her most bitter shafts.