And Parker withdrew.
“I thought about that ... I mean my parents’ souls,” he went on, “when I first felt a vocation. I thought, maybe, me being a priest might help them—not that they weren’t a hundred times better than me—it’s all very mysterious ...” he paused, and once again punctuated his sentence with the ruminative “úhu.”
“My mother is terribly unhappy because my eldest sister died an atheist ... and now Concha’s having ratted ...” she found herself saying; herself surprised at this abandoning of her wonted reserve.
“Poor lady!” he said very sympathetically; “yes, it’s a bad business for a mother ... my aunt Jeannie, she was an elderly lady, a good bit older than my mother. I lived with her in Inverness when I was going to the Academy. Well, my mother told me she had several good offers when she was young, but she would never marry, because she felt she just couldn’t face the responsibility of maybe bringing a damned soul into the world ... yes, the Scotch think an awful lot about the ‘last things.’ ... And I suppose your mother can’t do anything to stop her?”
“Have you ever heard of a mother being able to stop a child going its own way?”
“Maybe not,” and he smiled: “I should think you must have been most awfully wilful when you were wee,” and he looked at her quizzically.
The moment when the conversation between a man and a woman changes from the general to the personal is always a pungent one; Teresa gave him a cool smile and said, “How do you know?”
“Well, weren’t you?”
“Perhaps ... in a very quiet way.”
“Oh, that’s always the worst.”