Fortis imaginatio venerat casum.
CATHLEEN replied:
“I think you are hard on your mother. You love her too well to judge her, but you read yourself into her. You do that with me too, and I am sometimes alarmed when I think how I may disappoint you. But then I trust you so completely. You give so much that what you give turns at once into a gift from me to you, and that makes me give too. So it goes on like rain and cloud and river. Don’t try to upset your little family. They won’t like it. Keep all the upsetting for me. I love it and need it constantly.”
He was very happy with this letter, carried it in his pocket and fingered it continually. Under its influence he ceased to chafe against his surroundings, and made no further attempt to force himself on his mother, and in her shy way she seemed to take pleasure in his exuberance.
The Edinburgh attorney sent an advance of £100. He posted £20 to Kilner, and besought him to leave Mitcham Mews and find a studio or go down into the country. Another twenty he sent to Lotta for Ann. He bought his mother an Indian shawl and provided Elsie with two dresses, tailor-made. The children were taken to a toy shop and allowed to select three treasures each. Little George hesitated for a long time between a helmet and a whip, and finally chose the latter because his small brother was no good as a soldier, but quite fair as a horse.
When René announced that he must go, George declared that they would “make an evening of it,” and they played bridge until ten, and then in the parlor Mrs. Fourmy drew soft music from the old piano with its yellow keys. Under her hand the beauty of the Moonlight Sonata seemed faded, and René thought sadly that it was like the beauty of her life, faded and gone to dust. And as she played he took down the old family copy of Shakespeare, a vulgar edition spoiled with colored portraits of actors and actresses. He opened it at random and his eyes fell on these words:
Fear no more the heat o’ the sun
Nor the furious winter’s rages:
Thou thy worldly task hast done,
Home art gone and ta’en thy wages: