"Is that quite certain?"
"Yes. Trevelley's always at the back of it. He influences those children. We are getting into debt for Trevelley's sake.... Lot, I've often thought of getting a divorce. I wouldn't do it, because Mamma has been twice divorced already. But I sometimes ask myself, am I not throwing away my life for nothing? What good am I to her or she to me? We are staying together for nothing, for things that are past, for a passion that is past: one moment of mad, insensate blindness, of not knowing or caring, of just wanting.... For things that are past I have been throwing away my life, day after day, for twenty years on end. I am a simple enough chap, but I used to enjoy my life, I enjoyed the service ... and I have taken a dislike to everything and go on wasting my life day after day.... For something that is quite past I ..."
"Steyn, you know I appreciate what you do. And you're doing it purely for Mamma's sake. But, you know, I have often said to you, go your own way. Barren sacrifices make no appeal to me. If you think you will still find something in life by leaving Mamma, then do so."
But Steyn seemed to have recovered his indifference:
"No, my boy, what's spoilt is spoilt. Twenty years wear out a man's energy to make something more of his life. I felt at the time that I oughtn't to desert Mamma, when she was left all alone, not wholly through my fault, perhaps, but still very much so. To leave her now, when she is an old woman, would be the act of a cad: I can't do it. I take that line not as a barren sacrifice, but because I can't help it. I don't allow my life to be made a hell of. I go my own way when I want to, though Mamma exaggerates when she pretends that I go to a woman at night."
"Mamma is naturally jealous and she's still jealous of you."
"And she's jealous of you. She's an unhappy woman; and the older she grows the unhappier she will be. She's one of those people who ought never to grow old.... Come along, Jack, we're going for a walk.... But, Lot, if Mamma goes on like this, we shall have to have her property administered for her. There's nothing else for it."
Lot gave a start: he pictured Mamma with her property transferred to an administrator; and yet Steyn was right. He thought that he had better have a quiet talk with Mamma. For the moment, there was nothing to be done: Mamma was exasperated, was behaving like a lunatic and would send Hugh the fifty pounds.
Lot went back to his room and tried to resume his work. He was writing an essay On Art, proving that art was entertainment and the artist an entertainer. He did not know whether he agreed with everything that he was saying, but that didn't matter and was of no importance. It was a subject to fill a few brilliant pages, written with all his talent for words; and it would catch the public, it would be read: it would rouse indignation on the one side and a smile on the other, because there really might be a good deal in it and because Charles Pauws might be right in what he said. He lovingly fashioned his sentences out of beautiful words, making them seem convincing through their brilliancy.... But in between the sentences he thought of poor Mamma and suddenly found that he could not go on writing. He pitied her. He felt for Steyn, but he pitied poor Mamma.... He rose and paced his room, which was full of spoils of Italy: a few bronzes, a number of photographs after the Italian masters. A good fellow, Steyn, to let him have this room next to Mamma's and to go up to the top floor himself. But he pitied his mother, who was such a child. She had always been a child: she could not help being and remaining a child. She had been so very pretty and so seductive: a little doll always; and he remembered, when he was already a boy of seventeen, how perfectly charming Mamma used to look: so young, so extraordinarily young, with that adorable little face, those blue childlike eyes and that perfect, plump figure. She was thirty-eight then, without a sign of age; she was a pretty woman in the full bloom of her attractiveness. He had no need to look at Mamma's photographs as she was in those days and earlier: he remembered her like that; he remembered her looking like a young girl in a low, creamy-white lace dress, which she did not even take the trouble to put on very neatly, looking above all things charming, so intensely charming; he remembered her in a brown-cloth frock trimmed with astrakhan, with a little astrakhan cap on her frizzy hair, skating with him on the ice, so lightly and gracefully that people believed her to be his sister.... Poor Mamma, growing old now! And yet she still looked very nice, but she was growing old; and she had nothing—he was sure of this—she had nothing but her faculty for love. She had five children, but she was not a mother: Lot laughed and shook his head at the thought. He had educated himself; Ottilie had very early become aware of her great talent and her beautiful voice and had also educated herself; the Trevelleys had run more wild.... No, Mamma was not a mother, was not a woman of domestic tastes, was not even a woman of the world: Mamma had nothing but her faculty for love. She needed love, probably no longer needed passion, but still needed love; and what she needed most, needed mortally, was petting, like a child. And nobody petted her more than he did, because he knew that Mamma was mad on petting. She had once said to him, pointing to a photograph of his half-brother Hugh Trevelley, a good-looking lad turned twenty:
"Lot, it's eight months since I had a kiss from him!"