When I was sixteen my mother married again and went away for good. She married a Canadian judge, with some special scheme for prison reform. He had reorganized the penal system in Manitoba, my mother said, and that interested her. They went to live in Winnipeg, and only came back at long intervals to visit England. I believe she was happy in Winnipeg. She ran evening classes and formed Women’s Societies of different kinds. When I saw her next, about five years later, she seemed to me kinder than before, and more tolerant, and I think that may have been because she was happier.
Once, long after this, Cousin Delia said that she had been sorry for my mother, and that had surprised me very much. She had never seemed the sort of person one could be sorry for, but when Cousin Delia said that it made me think about it, and I wondered if she understood that nobody cared for her, none of my father’s people, I mean, and I wondered if perhaps that had made her harder and more aggressive. After all, she could not help being what she was, always wanting to alter things and put people right, and of course if she was like that, it must have been disappointing for her that my father was not and that I was not. I can see too that to her, Cousin Delia might be irritating just because she was so peaceful and didn’t want to upset things at all.
They never said they did not like her; they were very careful about that, except Guy and Hugo, of course; but I knew, and I knew that Cousin Delia had asked her to come to Yearsly and that she never came.
Her marriage made very little difference to me, but it was a certain relief. I felt as though a quite vague fear had been removed—a fear that some time she might assert herself and claim me, and take me away from Cousin Delia and my grandmother. Now I knew she would not.
XII
The next thing that happened was Guy’s twenty-first birthday. He had been at Oxford two years by then, and Hugo was just leaving Winchester.
It was on the 15th of July, and there was a party at Yearsly.
On the day before there was a dinner to the tenants and a school treat, but on the day itself there were no official festivities, just a party of people Guy wanted, mostly staying in the house, and a dance in the evening in the hall.
Hugo and I had come back from school for it, for the school terms were not quite over. It was my first real dance, and I was very excited.
A good many people were staying in the house. There were three Oxford friends of Guy’s—Ralph Freeman, John Ellis and Anthony Cowper. Ellis and Cowper had been at Winchester with him too, and stayed with us before. Ralph Freeman was new. Then there were Mary and Margaret Lacey, second cousins of Guy and Hugo on the other side, they too had stayed at Yearsly before, and Faith Vincent, the Vicar’s daughter, and Claude Pincent, who was also some sort of cousin of Cousin Delia’s. There were no other Laurier cousins, for my grandmother and Hugo’s grandfather had no other children but our fathers.