“Oh, well,” said René, “people believe only what they like to believe.”
Elsie was rather ruffled:
“After all, they’re our children.”
“Certainly. You’ll find out what they think of it soon enough.”
It was interesting to watch the processes which went to make up the fool’s paradise that George and Elsie, in common with their kind, called Home, the worship of lip-virtue, the constant practice of mean little subterfuges, George dodging Elsie’s interest and suspicion of himself, she his of her, and the children, where necessary, contributing to the comedy and, for the rest, living thoroughly, selfishly, and callously in their own pursuits.
René found that as long as he would let George talk about bridge, bowls, and business, or splutter abuse of Radical legislation, and as long as he allowed Elsie to chatter of the neighbors and children and music-halls and clothes, they were both quite happy.
With his mother it was otherwise. She was uneasy in his presence and they could hardly talk at all, except about their relations, the rich Fourmys, and the shabby tricks they had done; but after a while René became aware that they were holding a stealthy converse, an undercurrent to the words they used. He tried all sorts of devices to bring it to the surface but without success. His mother would relapse into silence or, without a word, would hurry off to her church and return impenetrably encased in humility, pale with emotional satiety. There was something abnormal about her then, something unnatural that made René’s flesh creep. When it had passed he would feel once more the wildness in her that she kept so savagely repressed.
He recognized at last that he was staying on in the hope of penetrating her defenses. Having come to that, he attacked her one night when George and Elsie were out, and he knew there was no service at the church for her to escape to. Like the dutiful husband he was, George made a practice of taking Elsie to a music-hall once a week, a music-hall or two cinemas, as she chose.
Mrs. Fourmy had put down her knitting and said:
“I think I would like a game of patience, René.”