His conscience pricked him, for his last visit had been paid in the spring. When he sent a copy of the book, which he knew would bore her to the verge of extinction, he promised to call on her the next Sunday.
He went in the afternoon. The latest of the Swiss lads to be described in the advertisements as "man servant" opened the door while struggling into his coat. His English was as unintelligible as his predecessors', and David had doubts whether she was at home while he waited in the hall. Dinner was over, but the smell of it lingered; she was unlikely to be out, he thought. The Swiss sped back, and delivering himself of strange syllables, led the way to the drawing-room. It was empty, and the smell of dinner was less strong here. After some minutes Ownie came in.
Her hair was yellow still, but the yellow of a "restorer," not the yellow of her youth, and under this piteous travesty of the past her aged face looked older. The years had caricatured her defects, and her business had stamped its mark upon her. Ownie was a bulky woman with a long upper lip and a fretful, vulgar mouth. In conversation she had the restless eye and mechanical smile of the boarding-house keeper, who during three meals every day makes an effort at cheerful small-talk—illustrating the advantages of the district in which her boarding-house is situated—while she listens suspensive to the servant inquiring behind a chair whether the occupant will "take any more." Of the girl who had once smiled victoriously in the mirror of a theatre vestibule nothing was left; in her stead was all the pathos of a lifetime. Only to the bulky woman it was given still to discern a likeness to the girl. Nature had yielded that; she did not see herself as she was. To her the rouge on her cheeks was not so palpable, the wrinkles were not so deep. Dyed, painted, dreary, she sank into a chair, and yawned widely, with her hands in her lap.
"I thought you were never coming again," she said.
He pleaded stress of work: "And I've been in the country since I saw you. Well, how are you, mother?"
"Oh, nothing to brag about; the heat has been killing, hasn't it? I should have liked a change too.... I haven't been able to read your book yet—I can't read for long, it tries my eyes so; I must get some new glasses. Well, are you making a fortune out of it?"
"It's selling splendidly—for poetry. Yes, I shall make a good deal by it, strange to say. If you want a change, why not go to Brighton for a week or two? I"—he was embarrassed—"I can give you the money."
"Oh, it isn't that," she explained with another gape; "I can't leave the house. Who's going to look after it while I'm gone? It's an awful drag if you haven't got a house-keeper. And if you have, you can't go away and leave everything to her! Fancy you with money to spare, though! Well, you've got to thank me for that, David—your cleverness comes from my side. You didn't have your father's voice, you know; if you hadn't written, I don't know what you'd have done."
He did not know either; his life would have been insupportable if he hadn't written. He looked beyond her vaguely, and nodded. "Is the house full?" he asked.
"Pretty full. They're most of them new now—Americans, and people up for a few weeks; the others 'll be coming back at the end of the month.... There's another boarding-house opened round the corner; they keep the gas full up in every room all the evening."