III
The day came, the terrible expense began, and Minnie’s child entered the world. It must be admitted that Minnie behaved very badly. She was never good at enduring pain, and she was moreover in terror of dying. Altogether a bad time, for her, for the doctor, for the nurse, and for poor Lionel.
But once the child was born, her fierce maternal passion flamed into life. She would have died to defend her baby. She nearly destroyed it with indulgence. That was her manner of loving.
And she believed that the fact of having this child constituted a claim upon all the world. That whatever she did for its sake was fully justified. Because she loved it, she was licensed to take what she could for it, by any and all means to secure advantages for it. A sort of divine license given only to mothers, so that they could do no wrong; an unlimited indulgence. Be assured that she took advantage of it!
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
I
They went on, God knows how, for two years. Always in debt, always harassed, gradually going down and down, their style of living always deteriorating, themselves becoming more indifferent, more slovenly.
They ate their meals in the kitchen, horrible meals of fried chopped meat and eternal potatoes. The little child was pallid and under-nourished, they bought milk for her dutifully, but Minnie had perverted her appetite with sweets and all sorts of rubbish, and she refused to drink it, unless it were made ‘tasty’ with coffee or tea. Minnie even did the family washing, with incredible labour and pitiful results: Lionel went about dressed in greyish shirts and streaked soft collars. At first he suffered, but very soon he forgot to notice.
Horace helped them generously, without question. But under Minnie’s influence, Lionel learned to feel no gratitude, even to feel resentful. For some reason the childless Horace was held morally responsible for their child. He didn’t do enough, in fact, he couldn’t have done enough; the most fantastic sacrifice would not have sufficed. Lionel rarely went to see him, and when he did, was constrained and formal. He communicated with him by means of letters very unpleasant to receive. He was no longer a friend or a brother, he was—metaphors fail for his sex—he was the male equivalent of a milch cow, of the goose that laid the golden egg. No one realised how the poor fellow suffered from this exploitation.
Lionel was a ruined man, his health impaired by Minnie’s loving cooking, his soul debauched by her dogma. He had never been resolute or original; his strength had lain in his conventionality, his acceptance of the principles taught him by others. And this faith in his tradition Minnie had stifled, to fell him with her own horrible doctrine of expediency.