Helen had soon found friends, and was now quite reconciled to Brighton; his mother, more fragile than ever in appearance, was content to sit still all day, looking at the smooth sea-plain with its gem-like glitter. More than once he was moved to open all his heart to his mother, and there were times when her eyes seemed to invite his confidence; but always between them was that gulf of silence, for which speech could frame no bridge. He wondered much about this silence of hers. It was scarcely apathy; no eyes could be as bright as hers if the heart were apathetic. It seemed rather to be a resolved incuriousness about things around her, a turning away of the face from life, as from something dreadful, that had only pain to offer her. Could one imagine a human creature, with "a bright, sunshiny day after shipwreck," sitting beside an empty sea, willing to think of nothing that came before or after, but just to breathe, and watch, and wait—that was the kind of impression Mrs. Masterman made upon the mind. Arthur was always delicately tender with her. He hung about her chair, arranged her shawl or pillows, was quick to perceive her wishes; but in the very kiss with which she rewarded him there was restraint. The time was to come when he was to know what it meant, but that time was not yet. Now, as in all the later years which he could recall, her one wish seemed to be to efface herself, and to take up as little room in life and in the thoughts of others as possible.
He was greatly surprised one night, when he came back to the hotel from a long walk over the Downs, to find his father in conference with Scales. There was a mass of papers lying on the table, and it was clear the two men were deeply interested in them.
"Come in," said Masterman. "We're busy, you see, but we'll soon be through now."
Scales greeted him with his usual smooth civility, and, as usual, it was a little overdone.
"Shall I wait?" said Arthur.
"No. You'd better dress for dinner. Scales is going to spend the night here. I have something to say to you later on."
Arthur left the room without remark; but as he was dressing the thought suddenly took hold on him, What did his father want with Scales?
He knew that his father did not like the man, and that made their present relation the more unintelligible. He had heard his father speak with brusque scorn of Scales' plan to punish John Clark, by getting him off to the Holy Land, and then starting a church revolution in his absence. That the man was false was beyond doubt. Falsity looked out of his narrow, deprecating eyes, falsity breathed in his smooth voice, falsity declared itself in his obsequious manners. Under no possible circumstances could such a man play fair either as friend or foe. Judas was such another as Elisha Scales, and Judas was an apostle as Scales was a deacon.
And here Arthur laughed at the absurdity of the suggestion.
"He'll find it hard to betray father," he said.