Amber was ready to weep at the pathos of it. It was pathetic; but terrible. She saw that Josephine’s nerves were strung up to the highest point of tension, and that was why the effect of shrillness was produced by her speech.
She turned to Lady Gwendolen. Surely Lady Gwendolen would at last become a mother to her own daughter! Surely she would detect the pathos of the change that had come about in her nature. And indeed Lady Gwendolen was very sympathetic.
“It is all very well to make light of the whole business, my dear Amber,” she cried plaintively. “Daughters engage themselves to be married, and sometimes get married too, without a thought for their mothers. Ah, is there no poet—no novelist—who will deal adequately with the mother’s tragedy? It will make me look a hundred, at the very least! A married daughter! ... ‘Good heavens!’ people will say. ‘I had no idea that Lady Gwendolen had a married daughter; why then she must be at least’—and then they will name some horrid age—forty, may be,—I know the way of these women. ‘Forty—she must be a good way over forty,’ they will say. ‘She was no chicken when she married, and her daughter looks every day of twenty-six—why, she must be at least fifty’—they will try to make me out to be fifty—fifty-two the spiteful ones will insist on—I know them. They will take very good care never to look up Debrett to get at the truth. Ah, the Mother’s Tragedy—the Mother’s Tragedy. No one ever thinks of asking about a woman’s age until her daughter gets married. Then, it’s the first thing they do. Ah, the Mother’s Tragedy! How well that broad brim suits her, doesn’t it, Joe? You didn’t think, I suppose, of a bow of cerise chiffon just at the curve? A little daring thing like that, you know, is often quite effective.”
“I hope you will be happy, my dearest Joe,” said Amber.
“I shall be married, at any rate,” said Josephine, “and isn’t that a step in the right direction? Happiness?... Well, could there be anything more ridiculous than an attempt to define happiness? Six months ago I had no hesitation in defining it for my own benefit. I defined it—down to the very man. That was where I was the fool,—for now I have come to think that that which I thought to be happiness is the only unhappiness that exists for me in the world. But I shall face it. I shall face it. When one has been a fool one must pay for it.”
“Dear Joe—oh, Joe—Joe! Do not talk so, for God’s sake,” cried Amber.
“You began it, my dear Amber,” said Joe, pointing a finger at her, and leaning back among the cushions of her sofa. The attitude was that one of the lovely figures in Andrea’s picture of “The Wedding Feast,” and Amber recognised it with horror. “You began it—you, talking about happiness and the rest of it,” she continued. “Well, there, I’ll say no more.... Heavens, I forgot that I did not see you since we returned from The Weir! And that seems a lifetime ago. Ah, it is true, ‘Marriage and death and division, make barren our lives.’ I wonder why I was such a fool as to go to The Weir with you, Amber.”
“What has come over her? She has been quite as rude as that all day,” complained Lady Gwendolen. “I thought that nothing could make her rude, however full of theories she might be. But I’ve noticed, Amber, that rudeness and a reputation usually go together. At any rate, the women who are said to be intellectual seem to me to be nothing but rude. As soon as a woman has insulted you grossly three times you must take it for granted that her intellect is of the highest order. Of course if you think cerise too trying you might have it in a much lighter shade just where the brim begins to curve. You saw my toque with the poppies and the corn? I was not afraid to face the strongest colour. Oh, must you really go?”
“She really must: I cannot see how she could possibly remain another five minutes,” said Josephine. “Amber has some sense of what is sacred and what is profane. I had the same ideas a week ago, but that’s a long time back. Priestesses of Baal must have revolted the sensitiveness of the daughters of Levi. Good-bye, Amber, and take my advice and don’t come back to us. I should be sorry to flaunt my new-found unhappiness in your face.”
The tone of her voice and of her laugh that followed gave Amber the impulse to put her fingers in her ears and rush from the room—from the house. She resisted the suggestion, however, and contented herself with a protest of uplifted hands and mournfully shaking head.