Angelica was delighted to get all this information. She leaned against the doorway in one of her careless, beautiful gamine attitudes, her dark eyes on Mrs. Russell’s face with an attention that pleased that veteran gossip.
"She’s a charming woman. Still, I was amazed at Vincent, of all people! She’s so much older than he—years, and she shows it. Of course, when they were first married three years ago, she was quite different—much nicer-looking. Poor soul! She really had a wretched time with Vincent. He’s frightfully trying. I really think she’s been wonderfully patient with him. I’ll never forget the day he came into my room and told me he was married. I couldn’t believe it; he’s so fickle and erratic. I never expected him to settle down. I don’t suppose he really has. And when I saw her—simply a plainly dressed woman of thirty-five! Of course, she has a certain sort of charm about her; she’s restful. I like being with her—but not all the time. I can’t understand why she clings to me so. She’s so self-reliant."
How indeed was Mrs. Russell to understand all this? She with her thistledown heart, her life of infantile amusement-seeking, to understand the solitude of this woman from a small town, accustomed to the friendly faces of neighbors, of people who had known her all her life and were interested in all that concerned her; this woman who had twice given her love with simplicity and generosity, to have it twice despised, a wife without a husband, a mother bereft of her child? Polly hadn’t a soul near her who took the least interest in her, no one to talk to. That was what made her so silent. She didn’t, she couldn’t utter flippancies; she longed for one of her own good, earnest, kindly small-town women, who would wish to listen and know how to console.
And in default of this, then she must have Mrs. Russell, who could at least talk about her lost child. She could say to her, "Do you remember this day and that day, this that he said, and how he looked?"
She had loved her child with a passion tiresome to all those about her. She had been absorbed in him; she had seen in this little boy not alone her only child, but her only friend, a fellow countryman in a hostile land. And now he was gone.
"She’s charming," Mrs. Russell repeated; "but I should never have picked her out for Vincent. She’s not the sort of woman to hold him. He’s so odd, you know. He always used to say that he’d never marry, and that he was looking for the perfect woman, whatever he fancied a perfect woman was. I don’t know what it was he saw in Polly. She’s not beautiful, or fascinating, as far as I can see. Of course, there’s her voice. It’s lovely, but still—— He met her at some sort of tea, he told me, and he said that he was enchanted by the sight of her, sitting there in her plain dark blue suit, with her hands folded, so quiet and clever, you know, in comparison with all the other women. I must admit I was disappointed."
She paused for a few minutes, to rub her big square nails with pink paste. When she began to talk again, she had unaccountably changed her point of view. Instead of her bland contempt for Polly, she had, somehow, within her queer soul developed a great indignation against her son.
"He has behaved abominably," she said, with a frown. "I can’t understand him. For days at a time he doesn’t speak to her; doesn’t even see her. And all for nothing! He took her up in a caprice, and he’s dropped her in another caprice. Do you know, my dear, all the time their child was so ill, he wouldn’t see it? He said he could do nothing to help it, and he couldn’t bear to look at suffering. And at last, when it died, the thing became so scandalous that Eddie had to go and actually force him to come into its room. So he came sauntering in, and what do you think he said? ‘Thank God I really hadn’t had time to grow attached to it yet.’"
"That was pretty bad," said Angelica. But she was more curious than shocked; she was eager to hear more about this atrocious Vincent.
"And now," went on Mrs. Russell, "whenever the poor soul begins to practise, he comes stamping out of his room and shouts down the stairs, ‘Stop! Stop! For God’s sake, stop!’"