"It's jolly to have someone like you, Christine!"
And she would be enormously pleased, and in the dusk they would sit close together and he would tell her of his superb being who changed the course of his life, who was like his mother and Francey and God rolled into one, and for whose sake he had emptied the housekeeping purse.
Perhaps it would all have happened just as he planned it, could it have happened then and there. But the front door was closed and he had to wait a long time for the landlady's heavy answering tread. When she came at last it was from upstairs—he could tell by her breathing and a familiar creak—and a cold dead hand laid itself on his heart and squeezed the hope out of it. They had been talking about him—those two grown-up people. He knew the kind of things they had said: "It's very tiresome of him to be out so late, Mrs. Withers," and, "Boys is worritting, outrageous critters, M'am," and the cruel impossibility of reaching their far-off impervious understanding lamed him before the door had opened.
Mrs. Withers' lumpy figure loomed up grotesquely against the yellow murk.
"Is that you, Master Robert? You'd better run up quick. Your aunt is going to give you a jacketing, I can tell you."
"Aunt" was the term with which Mrs. Withers covered up what she considered privately to be an ambiguous relationship.
Robert slunk past her. He crawled upstairs with an aggressive deliberation. He would show how much he cared. He was not afraid of Christine. He had seen her unhappy too often. In a way he knew that he was stronger than she was. For she was old and had no one to love but himself.
All the same he was afraid. With every step he took he seemed to climb farther and farther into the midst of fear. It was all around him—in the close, airless dark and in the deathly quiet light that came from the open doorway overhead. What was waiting for him there? His father, risen unimaginably loathsome from the grave? For he could never be in the dark without thinking of his father. Or something else? At least he knew that the never-really-believed-in time of peace was over and that the monster which had lain hidden and quiescent so long was crouched somewhere close to him, ready to leap out.
Christine sat by the table under the light. There was a drawer beside her which she had evidently torn out of its place in panic-stricken haste, for the floor about her was littered with its contents—gloves and handkerchiefs and ribbons. She held a shabby, empty purse in her limp hand, and it was as though she had sat down because she had no longer the strength to stand. He had not known before how grey her hair was. Her face was grey, too, and withered like a dead leaf.
He stood hesitating in the doorway and they looked at one another. There was no question of punishment or reproof between them. It was the old days over again when they had clung together in the face of a common peril—helpless and horribly afraid. She tried to smile and push the empty purse out of sight as though it were of no account at all. And all at once he was ashamed and miserable with pity.