The girl was hurt. Marion bit her lip while she watched her crossly pick up her spoon and eat her ice pudding as if it was a duty. "This is like old times," she essayed feebly. "I've so often watched Richard eat it. He went through various stages with this pudding. When he was quite small he used to leave the crystallised cherries to the very last, because they were nicest, arranged in a row along the rim of his plate, openly and shamelessly. When he went to school he began to be afraid that people would think that babyish if they noticed it, and he used to leave them among the ice, though somehow they always did get left to the last. Then later on he began to side with public opinion himself, and think that perhaps there was something soft and unmanly about caring so much for anything to eat, so he used to gobble them first of all, trying not to taste them very much. Then there came an awful holiday when he wouldn't have any at all. That was just before he insisted on going to sea. But then he came back—and ever since he's had it every time we come here, and now he always leaves the cherries to the last." She was now immersed in the story she told; she was seeing again the slow magical increase of the small thing she had brought into the world, and the variations through which it passed in the different seasons of its youth, changing from brown candid gracefulness to a time of sulky clumsiness and perpetually abraded knees, and back again to gracefulness and willingness to share all laughter, yet ever remaining the small thing she had brought into the world. With eyes cast down, trying to dissemble her pride, lest the gods should envy, she added harshly, "He was quite interesting ... but I suppose all boys go through these phases.... I've had no other experiences...."
Ellen was longing to hear what Richard was like when he was a boy, but she had been stung by that insolent, smiling murmur, and she could do nothing with any statement made by this woman but snarl at her. "No other experience?" she questioned peevishly. "I thought Richard said he had a half-brother."
There was no longer any pride in Marion's eyes to dissemble. She stared at Ellen, and said heavily, as one who speaks concerning the violation of a secret, "Did Richard tell you that?" Before the girl had time to answer cruelly, "Yes, he tells me everything," she had remembered certain things which made her stiffen in her chair and keep her chin up and use her eyes as if there still flashed in them the pride which had utterly vanished. "Oh, yes," she asserted, in that forced voice, but very loudly and deliberately. "I have another son. He's a good boy. His name is Roger Peacey. You must meet him one day. I hope you will like him." She paused and recollected why they were speaking of this other son, and continued, "But, you see, I had nothing to do with him when he was a boy."
This struck Ellen as very strange. She went on eating her ice pudding, but she cogitated on this matter. Why had this second son been brought up away from his mother? Surely that hardly ever happened except when there had been a divorce, and a husband whose wife had run away with another man was awarded by the courts "the custody of the child." Had she not talked of this son in the over-bluff tone in which people talk of those to whom they have done a wrong? She was possessed of the fierce monogamous passion which accompanies first and unachieved love, that loathing of all who are not content with the single sacramental draught which is the blood of God, but go heating the body with unblessed fermented wines; and she glared sharply under her brows at this woman, who after losing Richard's father married another man and then, as it appeared, had loved yet another man, as she might at someone whom she suspected of being drunk. It was true that Richard adored her, but then no doubt this kind of woman knew well how to deceive men. Softly she made to herself the Scottish manifestation of incredulity, "Mhm...." And Marion, for thirty years vigilant for sounds of scorn, heard and perfectly understood.
She remained, however, massively and unattractively immobile. There came to her neither word nor expression to remove the girl's dubiety. Since she had heard such sounds of scorn over so lengthy a period they no longer came to her as trumpet calls to action, but rather as imperatives to silence, for above all things she desired that evil things should come to an end, and she had learned that an ugly speech ricochetting from the hard wall of a just answer may fly further and do worse. She knew it was necessary that she should dispel Ellen's suspicion, because they must work together to make a serene home for Richard, and she desired to do so for her son's sake, because she herself was possessed by the far fiercer monogamous passion of achieved and final love, which is disillusioned concerning mystical draughts, but knows that to take the bread of the beloved and cast it to the dogs is sin. She had acquired that knowledge, which is the only valuable kind of chastity worth having, that night when she had been forced to commit that profanation. Shading her eyes while there rushed over her the recollection of a pallid face looking yellow as it bent over the lamp, she reflected that even if she conquered this life-long indisposition to reply, the story was too monstrous to be told. It would not be believed. This girl would look at her under her brows and make that Scotch noise again and think her a liar as well as loose. So she sat silent, letting Ellen dislike her.
She said at length, "Let's go and have coffee in the lounge."
"I'm sure we don't need it," murmured Ellen, as a tribute to the magnificence of the meal.
Crossing the room was a terrible business. She hoped people were not staring at her because she was with a woman whom they could perhaps see had once been bad. No doubt there were signs by which experienced people could tell. Richard's presence seemed all at once to have set behind the rim of the earth.
They sat down at last on a kind of wide marble platform, which looked down on another restaurant where there dined even more glorious people, none of whom wore hats, who seemed indeed to have stripped for their fray with appetite. They were nice-looking, some of them, but not like Richard. She looked proudly round just for the pleasure of seeing that there was not his like anywhere here, and found herself under the gaze of Richard's eyes, set in Richard's mother's face. Doubt left her. Here was beauty and generosity and courage and brilliance. Here was the quality of life she loved. She found herself saying eagerly, that she might hear that adorable voice and hoping that it would speak such strong words as he used: "Yes, Marion?"
"Ellen, when will you marry Richard?"