“Not one bit. A little shrinking creature, very proper, very dull—in a gentle fashion, appallingly obstinate. She and Miggles together are as good as a play. You’ll hear. They’ll get entangled in a dual conversation, and all I ask is—don’t look at me! Mrs Rendall would never forgive me if I laughed. She’s a trying little person, and Piers is sweet to her; never loses his patience. He deserves a halo for that.”
Vanna raised protesting eyebrows.
“Well, I hardly knew my parents, but I have realised the want of them so badly all my life that I can’t screw myself up to an access of admiration for a son who is decently polite to his mother. Suppose she does try his patience at times—that’s inevitable, I should say, between a young man and an old woman—how many times has she borne and forborne with him; what mountains of patience has she expended on his training? It’s not a virtue, it’s mere common decency that he should be kind to her now. He would be despicable if he failed.”
“Quite true, every word true. You are theorising, dear, and there’s not an argument against you. But leave theories alone for a moment and look at facts. How many parents and children—grown-up children—do you find who live together in sympathy and understanding? Precious few. Sometimes there’s an open feud; that’s rare, and can’t go on in the nature of things; sometimes there’s an armed truce; sometimes there are successions of jars; almost always there’s a gulf. They see with different eyes, and hear with different ears, and each side thinks the other blind and deaf. One side lacks sympathy, the other imagination. It seems the most difficult thing in the world to ‘put yourself in his place.’”
“I don’t know. If I’d had my own mother, it seems to me we would have been friends. It wouldn’t have needed a great exercise of sympathy to realise that she was old and tired, tired with looking after me; and if I had made a friend of her and talked to her, and—told her things, she would have sympathised with me in return. I know she would. I feel it!”
“Did you, ‘tell things’ to Aunt Mary?”
“No, of course not. That was different.”
“Ah, you think so; but it is not. It’s the generation that’s the bar, not the person,” cried Jean with one of her quick flashes of intuition. “Youth wants youth and looks for it, and finds it easier to confide in a girl after a week’s acquaintance than in her very own mother, I’ve seen it not once, but dozens of times. It doesn’t mean that she loves her more, or a tenth part as much, but in a curious, inexplicable way she’s nearer. It’s hard on the parents. Every age has its own trials: love troubles when you are young; weakness when you are old; when you are middle-aged it must be just this, to yearn after your children, to long to help and comfort, and to see them prefer some one else! I’m sorry for parents; but why do they grow so old? If I have a daughter, I shall keep young for her sake. At least I shall remember that I was young. I shall never say: ‘the rain is coming down in sheets, the wind is in the east. I can’t think why you can’t be content by your own fireside, instead of racing half over the town,’ I shan’t be overcome with surprise when she forgets to order the fish on the eve of a proposal, or expect her to look a fright in mackintosh and goloshes when she goes out with men friends. I shall remember how I preferred to look nice, even if my feet were soaked!”
“You may also remember that you suffered from rheumatism thereby, and wish her to profit from your experience.”
“No use, my dear. Her rheumatism’s her own, and if it comes she will bear it, but never my goloshes! A parent can be wise and prosy, and expound the law; but he can’t do more. If he tries, he loses instead of gains. I shall school myself to the fact that my little girl is bound to err, and that we are bound to suffer in consequence, she in deed, and I in looking on. That’s the price of being a mother. Then when she’s had her own way and been buffeted, she’ll come to me and I’ll help her. Dear little girl!”