“Never mind,” said Clementina. “But what will you want an old frump like me in your house for?”
“To listen to my troubles,” said the girl.
Clementina walked home through the soft May sunshine, a smile twinkling in her little beady eyes and the corners of her lips twisted into an expression of deep melancholy. If she had been ten years younger there would have been no smile in her eyes. If she had been ten years older a corroborative smile would have played about her lips. But at thirty-five a woman in Clementina’s plight often does not know whether to laugh or to cry, and if she is a woman with a sense of humour she does both at once. The eternal promise, the eternal message vibrated through the air. The woman of five-and-thirty heard it instinctively and rejected it intellectually. She hurried her pace and gripped her umbrella—Clementina always carried a great, untidy, bulging umbrella—as if to assure herself that it would rain to-morrow from leaden skies. But the day laughed at her, and the gardens which she passed flaunted lilac and laburnum and pink may and springtide and youth before her, and buttercups looked at her with a mocking air of innocence. Forget-me-nots in window-boxes leaned forward and whispered, “See how fresh and young we are.” A very young plane tree looked impudently green; in its dainty fragility it suggested Etta.
“Drat the child,” said Clementina, and she walked along, shutting her eyes to the immature impertinences of the spring. But outside the window of a fruiterer’s in the Royal Hospital Road she stopped short, with a little inward gasp. A bunch of parrot-tulips—great riotous gold things splashed all over with their crimson hearts’ blood, flared like the sunset flames of a tropical summer. As a hungry tomtit flies straight to a shred of meat, she went in and bought them.
When she reached her house in Romney Place she peeped for the last (and the hundredth) time into the open mouth of the twisted white paper cornet.
“They’ll make a nice bit of colour on the dinner-table for Tommy,” she said to herself.
O Clementina! O Woman! What in the name of Astarte had the gold and crimson reprobates to do with Tommy?
She let herself in with her key, traversed her Sheraton drawing-room, and opened the door leading on to the studio gallery. Tommy was below, walking up and down like a young wild beast in a cage. His usually tidy hair was ruffled, as though frenzied fingers had disturbed its calm. Clementina called out:
“You asked if you could come to dinner. Six o’clock isn’t dinner-time.”
“I know,” he cried up at her. “I’ve been here for an hour.”