Charlotte, instead of answering, glanced abruptly at the clock.
“Do you know what time it is? Past midnight. I mustn’t keep you sitting up for my foolish girl.”
Delia’s heart contracted. She saw that Charlotte wished to cut the conversation short, and to do so by reminding her that only Tina’s mother had a right to decide what Tina’s future should be. At that moment, though Delia had just protested that there could be no question of gratitude between them, Charlotte Lovell seemed to her a monster of ingratitude, and it was on the tip of her tongue to cry out: “Have all the years then given me no share in Tina?” But at the same instant she had put herself once more in Charlotte’s place, and was feeling the mother’s fierce terrors for her child. It was natural enough that Charlotte should resent the faintest attempt to usurp in private the authority she could never assert in public. With a pang of compassion Delia realized that she herself was literally the one being on earth before whom Charlotte could act the mother. “Poor thing—ah, let her!” she murmured inwardly.
“But why should you sit up for Tina? She has the key, and Delia is to bring her home.”
Charlotte Lovell did not immediately answer. She rolled up her knitting, looked severely at one of the candelabra on the mantelpiece, and crossed over to straighten it. Then she picked up her work-bag.
“Yes, as you say—why should any one sit up for her?” She moved about the room, putting out the lamps, covering the fire, assuring herself that the windows were bolted, while Delia passively watched her. Then the two cousins lit their bedroom candles and walked upstairs through the darkened house. Charlotte seemed determined to make no further allusion to the subject of their talk. On the landing she paused, bending her head toward Delia’s nightly kiss.
“I hope they’ve kept up your fire,” she said, with her capable housekeeping air; and on Delia’s hasty reassurance the two murmured a simultaneous “Goodnight,” and Charlotte turned down the passage to her room.
IX
DELIA’S fire had been kept up, and her dressing-gown was warming on an arm-chair near the hearth. But she neither undressed nor yet seated herself. Her conversation with Charlotte had filled her with a deep unrest.
For a few moments she stood in the middle of the floor, looking slowly about her. Nothing had ever been changed in the room which, even as a bride, she had planned to modernize. All her dreams of renovation had faded long ago. Some deep central indifference had gradually made her regard herself as a third person, living the life meant for another woman, a woman totally unrelated to the vivid Delia Lovell who had entered that house so full of plans and visions. The fault, she knew, was not her husband’s. With a little managing and a little wheedling she would have gained every point as easily as she had gained the capital one of taking the foundling baby under her wing. The difficulty was that, after that victory, nothing else seemed worth trying for. The first sight of little Tina had somehow decentralized Delia Ralston’s whole life, making her indifferent to everything else, except indeed the welfare of her own husband and children. Ahead of her she saw only a future full of duties, and these she had gaily and faithfully accomplished. But her own life was over: she felt as detached as a cloistered nun.