As he opened the door of the little sitting-room he thought at first that it was the old unchanged Evelyn of childhood who greeted him so warmly. But to read men's souls is part of the priestly office, and there was something in her air of enforced gaiety which made him look at her more closely.
"You dear!" she said, holding his hands in hers as if they were a source of strength. "Isn't this a nice surprise? Lord Creagh offered to drive me down, and I couldn't resist the chance of routing you out."
"You are just one of the few people I wanted to see," said Cummings. "One of my last remaining links with the past. I won't have another soul admitted while you're here. You'll let me smoke, won't you? I want to hear about everything and everybody. I'm going to have my say first, yours comes later. If you talk as much as you used, I shan't get a look in when once you've started."
She became more at ease as he spoke. He pulled an arm-chair up to the empty grate, and wedged a shiny black horse-hair cushion at her back.
"Now begin about home, please. Is my mother's complexion still like a Greuze? How absolutely lovely she was once! Some one told me that my father had sold his hunters and taken to driving out in a governess car behind a fat pony. Surely that isn't true—they've not lost money, have they?"
"He is very changed," said Evelyn, hesitating. "He has become a total abstainer. Don't look so aghast, Jack; I believe in a way it suits him. A year ago he had a stroke which shook his nerves a good deal, and your mother is a chronic invalid, you know. She was thrown from the box-seat of a coach at the four-in-hand meet three years ago. We think some sort of vertigo must have seized her."
She looked pityingly at the bent form of the man beside her.
"We can't always be young, dear Jack," she said, with her eyes full of pain. "I always think the most obvious compensation of old age is its inability to feel, as we younger people do. The blows which fall on old people scarcely seem to shake their serenity. But they shatter us. Oh yes, it must be nice to be old. Your parents are marvellous considering all they have gone through. And, you see, you were their life, their all, and they won't let themselves be happy in your peace. Oh, my dear boy, don't look like that; things will come right in time—at least that's what I'm always telling other people," she added, faltering a little.
Cummings walked up and down the room for a moment or two before answering.
"Pone, Domini, custodian ori meo.... Yes, we say those things to others, but they don't always convince us. There are times when horrible spiritual dryness grips you, and you grope for days and weeks in absolute darkness, knowing that you yourself have raised the veil between you and the light."