Which he did; and in a series of brief sentences described the girl’s state of mind when he accidentally found her down by his fence, and how it was the idea of being left alone with Jocelyn’s mother till the summer that she couldn’t stand, because she simply couldn’t stand his mother. Frightened of her. Scared stiff. Just simply couldn’t stand her.
At this Jocelyn, roused from his stupor, looked round at Mr. Thorpe with heavy-eyed amazement.
‘Couldn’t stand my mother?’ he said in tones of wonder, his mouth remaining open, so much was he surprised.
‘That’s the ticket,’ said Mr. Thorpe; and drank more whiskey.
He then, after explaining that he wasn’t an orator, told Jocelyn in a further series of brief sentences that it was unnatural for wives to live with their mothers-in-law instead of with their husbands, that his wife knew and felt this, and that she was, besides, having been brought up on the Bible and being otherwise ignorant of life, genuinely and deeply shocked at what she regarded as his disobedience to God’s laws.
‘But my mother,’ said Jocelyn, ‘has been nothing but——’
‘Sees red about your mother, that girl does,’ interrupted Mr. Thorpe.
‘But why?’ said Jocelyn, sitting up straight now, his brows knitted in the most painful bewilderment.
‘Don’t ask me,’ said Mr. Thorpe; and drank more whiskey.
He then told Jocelyn, in a third and last series of brief sentences, for after that not only had he said his say but the young man didn’t seem able to stand any more, that if—no, when—his wife was restored to him, he had better see to it that his mother was as far off and as permanently off as possible; and then, Jocelyn by this time looking the very image of wretchedness, he gave him, poor young devil, the bit of comfort of telling him that his wife had only meant to leave him till she knew he was in Cambridge, and that then she had been going to join him there, and live in some rooms somewhere near him. It wasn’t him she was running from, it was his mother.