But the first glimpse of her son sent all Julia's evil birds flying. As the train steamed in, she saw him craning his eyes at its windows; saw that he was alone, that he was sun-bronzed, flanneled like a schoolboy. Her heart thumped--painfully, joyfully--at the knowledge that he had espied her, that he was loping along after her carriage, just as she remembered him loping along the platform at Winchester, in his cricket-flannels, twenty years ago. Then the train stopped; and he swung the carriage door open, handed her out.
"My luggage----" began Julia; but got no further with the sentence; because Ronnie, her Ronnie, who had never, even as a boy, caressed his mother in public, just put an arm round her shoulders and, kissing her, whispered: "By jingo, mater, it is ripping to see you."
A porter got her trunk and her handbag out of the train. Another porter put them into the pony-cart. Julia, for once in her life, forgot to thank them. Tears, tears she dared not shed, twitched her wrinkled eyelids; her mouth had dried up; her thin knees tottered. She could only cling, cling with all the strength of one weak arm, to Ronnie. He was her son, her only son--and she, in her stupid pride, had thought to let prejudice come between them. Her jealousy of "that woman" disappeared. The happiness, the health, the rejuvenation of Ronnie were sufficient justification, in her eyes, for Aliette. No worthless woman could have put those sunny words into her boy's mouth, that sun-bronze on his cheeks!
Ronnie, too, was moved almost to tears. The first sight of his mother, reacting on the emotions of the past weeks, struck him to consciousness of his love for her. She needed his protection more than ever before. She looked so frail, so suffering. She had suffered--because of him, because of Aliette. His heart went out to both women--in pity, in self-condemnation.
He helped her into the trap (it no longer surprised her to find they were alone) and said: "I'm afraid it's not very comfortable. That cushion's for your back. We'll have some tea at the Arms before we start."
She managed to answer: "Yes, dear. I think I would like some tea." To herself she said: "I wonder which of them thought about giving me tea, about bringing this cushion."
Ronnie clambered up; took the reins; and tipped the porters. In silence, they drove to the inn.
There the hot tea and the hot buttered toast, which he coaxed her to eat, brought back a little of Julia's courage; but the waitress, popping--eager-faced at sight of strangers--in and out of the coffee-room, made free speech impossible. Perforce they confined conversation to generalities. He, she said, "looked extraordinarily well." She, he said, "looked the least bit tired." The lunch on the train, she told him, had been "execrable." The drive to the Cove, he told her, was a "good eight miles" and they would have to "take things easy" because of the luggage. Ought they, he asked, to have ordered her a car? Oh, no--she smiled, she preferred the trap: it would give them more time to talk.
"I rather expected you'd bring Smithers," mentioned Ronnie.
"I didn't think a maid--advisable," declared Julia.