Olver slunk away. Lovel came forward, and patiently began setting the room to rights; although he was too practical a man to indulge himself in the fastidiousness which might have been his by nature, he was often sickened by the loathsomeness of the many tasks he had to perform for his mother: he was sickened now. She was utterly without regard for decency; but for her son, she would have wallowed contentedly in the squalor of her room; it was amazing to him how, helpless though she was, and able to travel about only by propelling herself in her wheeled chair, she yet contrived during his short absences to reduce the room she inhabited to the appearance of a hovel.
“Can Olver not fetch away your supper, but you must start quarrelling with the lad?” he said.
Immediately she broke into a torrent of grievances, in the high, shrill voice of her petulance, which Lovel knew so well; and he regretted that he had not let the matter pass uncommented, since it was irremediable. He waited until she had finished, then bent over and said with his usual gentleness, “Come, mother, let me help you to bed.”
She allowed him to raise her from her chair, first throwing back the old miscellaneous shawls and coverings, and, half lifting, half carrying her across the room, he deposited her on her bed. She kept up meanwhile a continual grumble: where had he been all day, that he had so neglected her? Since early morning he had not been near her; she had been dependent upon Olver for her food and her company; but Olver was a good lad; he did not go off all day like Nicholas did, wenching, no doubt,—Nicholas pressed his hands tightly together, to keep himself silent,—Olver had sat with her that afternoon, and they had talked; where would she be, without Olver for company?
During this complaining and muttering Lovel had busied himself with making her comfortable in bed; he covered her over, arranged her pillow for her, placed a glass of water within her reach,—she always wanted matches too, but was not allowed them;—he now looked down upon her as she lay, her helpless form under the shapeless heap of bedclothes and her scant grey locks straggling over the pillow. She had the same eyes as her sons, in what must have been a fine bony face; and the same cunning look frequently stole into them as stole into Olver’s.
“I hope you have not again been filling the lad’s head with the rubbish I have so often forbidden,” said Lovel anxiously in reply to her last remark.
“A nice way for you to speak to your mother!” she croaked. “Olver doesn’t speak so to me; forbidden, indeed! Never you mind what Olver and I have been saying. If I had only been given Olver to myself I could have made him into something better than a mere simpleton, as you all dub him; but no, I wasn’t to have Olver to myself: there was always Nicholas between us, with his ‘forbidden’ ... forbidden.... Anyhow, Nicholas hasn’t won altogether,” she muttered, not quite daring to speak too distinctly; “there are hours every day when Nicholas isn’t at home.”
“I can always get Olver to tell me the truth,” said Lovel, “and if I find you have been at your tricks I shall have to keep him away from your room.”
The old woman laughed; a grating and unpleasant laugh, between fear and amusement.
“And to do that you will have to stay at home, and then where will the money come from, my pretty boy?”