Indeed, as time went on and her weakness grew more apparent to others, the demeanour of her mother grew into a terror to her. She would fly from it to her own room where she would sit with her idle hands lying in her lap, in a quiet agony of loneliness.
It was a point of honour with her to keep herself calm; she ate and drank too, and she rested obediently whenever Mary, who had taken the physical part of her under her charge, said she needed rest; she drove when the old woman prescribed air, and walked when movement was supposed to be necessary. She was a mere automaton in her absolute yielding to orders concerning her health.
During this time Mr. Waring made a wild attempt to expand into a father. He would issue from time to time from his library with a bundle of random papers in his hand, and entertain Gwen with discourse, grave and gay, mostly concerning Africa, of which continent he had rather a poor opinion and which he painted with lurid colours.
As he reeled out anecdotes of the gruesomeness of the climate, the impracticability of travelling, the hideous forms diseases assumed, the congenital villany of the natives, more especially of that portion of the land into which Strange meant to penetrate, and of which he certainly possessed a most intimate knowledge, Gwen used to watch him with a curious cold sort of pain, and wonder if he were human, till one day Mrs. Fellowes found out the existence of these ghastly entertainments and stopped them.
One morning when Mr. Waring was thus engaged, his wife sped away in a half furtive fashion and shut herself into the children’s nursery. Kneeling down by the drawers she began to pull out great heaps of soft white lawn and lace and creamy flannel, then with much puzzled doubt she set to sorting the things into little heaps, each after its kind; when that was done she went softly out, and in a few minutes returned with old Mary.
“Has my daughter provided herself with those little things?” she asked nervously.
“I don’t know, ma’am, I was thinking of speaking to her on the subject.”
“These are good, are they not, the lace seems to me to be real and I do not see any holes?”
“Lord, ma’am, they are like new, it isn’t likely that I’d have my clothes torn after two babies, I’ve brought a set through six, ma’am!”
“Do the fashions in these things change, Mary?”