An unconquerable woman was Captain Vincey’s mother—slight and small, straight as a dart, always neat and dignified and smiling. She was nearly seventy, but she did not look it, so great was the spirit that animated her fragile body.
She had made a pot of tea, and she and her granddaughter drank it in the kitchen.
“Joey,” she said, “I’ll have to ask you to get me a little money to-morrow.”
“To-morrow? But the new man’s coming to-morrow, gran.”
Both were silent for a time, looking out of the window, where below them the blue Atlantic stretched, unendurably bright in the sun. Mrs. Vincey was thinking of her old home in Kent, of green fields and dripping trees under the soft blue of an April sky. It was strange that the days of her girlhood seemed so close to her, so much more real than all the years of wandering with her engineer husband in South America, in Canada, in New York. That was all a little nebulous. What was vivid was the memory of her Kentish fields.
But to Joey the memory of her girlhood seemed so remote as to be incredible. She was the only child of Mrs. Vincey’s daughter and her American husband, left an orphan now, and penniless. She had come to Port Linton from New York, three years ago, a jolly, lively schoolgirl of seventeen, ready for adventure; and she had found—this.
“I think you’d be happier if you found something to do, wouldn’t you, Joey?” Mrs. Vincey had said.[Pg 527]
Joey had gone to see Mr. Brown—who was expecting her—and he had taken her into his office.
Mrs. Vincey stayed home and kept house. With smiling dignity she faced tradesmen who explained why they could give her no more credit. Morning after morning she telephoned her son’s business partner, to tell him that “Captain Vincey was ill, and couldn’t come to the office.” She cooked meals and served them decently, out of Heaven knows what pitiful materials. She had kept the house neat, she had sat up at night, patching and turning and mending clothes for them all.
And she would not see, she dared not see, what was happening to Joey—the jolly schoolgirl turning into this pale, still woman. She would willingly have given her life for Joey, but she would not admit her son’s shame. It must be taken for granted!