“I won’t let you!” cried Minnie. “I won’t have it!”
“Good God! What do you want to make of me? Can’t you see, even you, that it’s the only way to rehabilitate myself? My only chance. I shan’t lose it, no fear!”
“Don’t you dare!” she cried hysterically. “I’ll die! It would kill me!”
Mr. Petersen entered after Alec had gone out angrily, banging the door.
“Minnie, my dear,” he said, mildly, “don’t you think you’re wrong to try to influence your brother in such a——”
“Oh, do stop!” she interrupted rudely. “You don’t understand.” And suddenly grew angry with him. “I should think you could see he’s not fit for a military life. So thin and sensitive. How can you be so heartless.”
Mr. Petersen remarked that if he weren’t fit for a military life, he wouldn’t be accepted, but Minnie said she knew all about that; they’d take anyone they could get hold of, even in a dying condition.
This marked the end of her period of sweetness. With her characteristic scorn for doctor’s orders, she refused to stay in bed any longer. In a wrapper, thinner, pallid, and untidy, she pervaded the house, for the sole purpose of keeping her eye on Alec. She followed him about, scolding him, crying, tormenting him. He stopped arguing, he absolutely refused to answer her. He would sit, with a cigarette in his mouth, quite unmoved by her tirades.
It was undoubtedly a unique opportunity for the poor fellow to “rehabilitate” himself, as he put it, and Mr. Petersen couldn’t understand why he hesitated. Surely no man owed so immoderate a duty to a sister. If he wanted to go, if he saw it as his duty to go, why in Heaven’s name, didn’t he go, and at once?
All of poor Minnie’s loves were so inordinate. She was to Alec as she was to her children, utterly and blindly devoted, without the least discretion or scruple. He knew that she didn’t love him in that way, but he felt it was because he was independent, didn’t need her so. Her whole life consisted in service for those weaker ones. The most superfluous services, that instead of helping hindered. She annoyed Alec by her futile and insistent attentions, by counting his cigarettes and deploring their number, by bringing him special dishes which were intended to fatten him. She denied Sandra nothing, no matter how injurious and stupid. She served her little son by carrying him in her arms continually, never let him alone in peace. Only to Mr. Petersen she did nothing but her duty, and not always that, though she didn’t realise it.