"Shakespeare," he said, in the same dull tone; "not Ouida."
"Was it? It's at the beginning of one of Ouida's books, I know. If your brother gets married at his age, he might as well hang himself at once."
The tremor was in his pulses still. But Beckenhampton was not a village—the coincidence was so unlikely; he kept repeating that it couldn't be.
"If his salary is such a good one, and he's fond of her——" he demurred.
"'Such a good one'? Well"—she was a shade confused—"it's good enough for him as he is; it wouldn't go far with a wife and family to keep. Besides, a man's always better off single than married; only he's so soft as soon as a pretty face comes along. Some artful minx who wants a home makes up to him, and all of a sudden he imagines he can't go through life without her. Good Lord! if a man could see into a girl's head while she's gushing about the view and pretending she's an angel. Men are taken in by every girl they meet, the fools!" Her scorn of the fools was in no wise restrained by the fact that she had captured two husbands herself. She was thinking of her son. When a woman lives to see the arts by which she gained her husband practised to ensnare her son, candour can reveal no more. Nor in the badly constructed tragedy of life is there any other situation that comes so close to poetical justice.
David found the afternoon the most irksome that he had spent at Regent's Park. Though he told himself that his misgiving was fantastic, it continued to disturb him, and while he sipped weak tea, and made perfunctory responses, he was trying to define Hilda's feeling for him, questioning whether it was in woman's nature for Hilda to write to him as he believed she wrote, and yet to be susceptible to the courtship of another man. Vivian was handsome, debonair, "so popular wherever he went." Yes, Vivian had always been popular, he remembered bitterly. Might not the passion of a lover at her side prove a stronger force than the worship of a correspondent which had never been confessed? Could she not say—might she not be happy to say—that by never a word had her letters to himself been more than the letters of a friend? Then Vivian would take her from him. Vivian, who it seemed to him in a burst of fear and jealousy had always taken everything, would rob him of her too!... But, again, the coincidence was so improbable. Besides, his mother might be wrong; she might be exaggerating the idlest fancy; perhaps Vivian had no desire to marry anyone!
He was relieved when the clock gave him an excuse to rise.
"Well, good-bye, mother." He avoided her complexion and dropped a kiss on her dyed fringe.
"Must you go?" she said. "Er—David, if you're really sure you can spare a few pounds, I'd be very glad of the money to get a new dress with. I haven't got a decent thing to put on for dinner. This blouse is so shabby I'm ashamed to sit at the table in it."
He promised to send what she wanted, and took up his hat. When his hand was on the door-knob, she asked him if he would stay to supper; but he declined the invitation. As he made his way home, he repeated more than once that his tremor was ridiculous, and assured himself that he was much amused at his folly. He smiled stiffly, to prove his amusement.... Still he wished that the week were past and Vivian had come to town. He would feel easier when he had seen Vivian.