“I’ll not do that. Mother has been angry with me for a long time. Just after the Tays were at Bosquith I wrote her I was unhappy and disappointed—and horrified. You see, Daniel Tay made me feel almost a child again, and I longed for my mother’s sympathy. She wrote back that I was a romantic and ungrateful child; that I had enough to make any girl happy; and that there was nothing really wrong. All men were nuisances. She seemed afraid I might run away and spoil her plans. Since then our letters have been stiff and infrequent—until the duke married, when she was more angry with me still. Now we don’t write at all. Besides, I never wish her to know of this. She may be hard, but she is old, and she has had disappointments enough.”
“And what, may I ask, do you mean to do?”
“Surely the law—”
“The law will do nothing—as matters are at present. And for heaven’s sake keep out of the courts.”
“Very well, then, I’ll go to work.”
“Work?”
“Yes. I intended to do that meanwhile, in any case. I went to Ishbel’s on the way here, but Mr. Jones is ill and I couldn’t see her. So I thought you would let me stay here —”
“Oh, of course. But I don’t like this silly idea of yours, at all. Much better you go back to Nevis. That is the only real solution. People here will think you have merely gone to pay a visit to your mother—natural enough—and when you don’t return—well, people are soon forgotten in London.”
“And I shall be comfortably buried! I shall, of course, go to Nevis sooner or later, but not while I am in trouble. And I never could remain there. After five years of England? I am as weaned as you are. I should die of inanition.”
Mrs. Winstone got up and moved about the room restlessly. In her well-ordered life few problems were permitted to enter, and not only did she resent this sudden influx of deadly seriousness, but she practised a certain form of cheap “occultism” much in vogue: avoiding everything that contained an element of darkness, depression, and disturbance, and everybody that persisted in having troubles. She manufactured an atmosphere to keep herself young and happy much as she manufactured her famous expression daily before the mirror, and anchored herself so successfully in the warm bright shallows of life that what springs of emotion she may originally have possessed had dried up long since. But she could still feel intense annoyance, and she felt it now. Moreover, she was puzzled. As the tiresome creature’s only relative in England, she should be equally criticised if she refused her shelter and sympathy in her trouble, or if she identified herself with her revolt. What in heaven’s name was to be done? Well, this was December, and the world out of London. And this war would fill everybody’s thoughts if it only lasted long enough. She returned to her chair.