“He’s a pig sometimes,” said I.
“He is!” she insisted. “He irritates me past bearing, with his grand know-all way, and his heavy smartness — I can’t bear it. And the way Mother humbles herself to him —!”
“It makes you wild,” said I.
“Wild!” she echoed, her voice vibrating with nervous passion. We walked on in silence, till she asked:
“Have you brought me those verses of yours?”
“No — I’m so sorry — I’ve forgotten them again. As a matter of fact, I’ve sent them away.”
“But you promised me.”
“You know what my promises are. I’m as irresponsible as a puff of wind.”
She frowned with impatience and her disappointment was greater than necessary. When I left her at the corner of the lane I felt a string of her deep reproach in my mind. I always felt the reproach when she had gone.
I ran over the little bright brook that came from the weedy, bottom pond. The stepping-stones were white in the sun, and the water slid sleepily among them. One or two butterflies, indistinguishable against the blue sky, trifled from flower to flower and led me up the hill, across the field where the hot sunshine stood as in a bowl, and I was entering the caverns of the wood, where the oaks bowed over and saved us a grateful shade. Within, everything was so still and cool that my steps hung heavily along the path. The bracken held out arms to me, and the bosom of the wood was full of sweetness, but I journeyed on, spurred by the attacks of an army of flies which kept up a guerrilla warfare round my head till I had passed the black rhododendron bushes in the garden, where they left me, scenting no doubt Rebecca’s pots of vinegar and sugar.
The low red house, with it roof discoloured and sunken, dozed in sunlight, and slept profoundly in the shade thrown by the massive maples encroaching from the wood.
There was no one in the dining-room, but I could hear the whirr of a sewing-machine coming from the little study, a sound as of some great, vindictive insect buzzing about, now louder, now softer, now settling. Then came a jingling of four or five keys at the bottom of the keyboard of the drawing-room piano, continuing till the whole range had been covered in little leaps, as if some very fat frog had jumped from end to end.
“That must be mother dusting the drawing-room,” I thought. The unaccustomed sound of the old piano startled me. The vocal chords behind the green-silk bosom — you only discovered it was not a bronze-silk bosom by poking a fold aside — had become as thin and tuneless as a dried old woman’s. Age had yellowed the teeth of my mother’s little piano, and shrunken its spindle legs. Poor old thing, it could but screech in answer to Lettie’s fingers flying across it in scorn, so the prim, brown lips were always closed save to admit the duster.
Now, however, the little old-maidish piano began to sing a tinkling Victorian melody, and I fancied it must be some demure little woman, with curls like bunches of hops on either side of her face, who was touching it. The coy little tune teased me with old sensations, but my memory would give me no assistance. As I stood trying to fix my vague feelings, Rebecca came in to remove the cloth from the table.
“Who is playing, Beck?” I asked.
“Your mother, Cyril.”
“But she never plays. I thought she couldn’t.”
“Ah,” replied Rebecca, “you forget when you was a little thing sitting playing against her frock with the prayer-book, and she singing to you. You can’t remember her when her curls was long like a piece of brown silk. You can’t remember her when she used to play and sing, before Lettie came and your father was —”
Rebecca turned and left the room. I went and peeped in the drawing-room. Mother sat before the little brown piano, with her plump, rather stiff fingers moving across the keys, a faint smile on her lips. At that moment Lettie came flying past me, and flung her arms round mother’s neck, kissing her and saying:
“Oh, my Dear, fancy my Dear playing the piano! Oh, Little Woman, we never knew you could!”
“Nor can I,” replied Mother laughing, disengaging herself. “I only wondered if I could just strum out this old tune; I learned it when I was quite a girl, on this piano. It was a cracked one then; the only one I had.”
“But play again, dearie, do play again. It was like the clinking of lustre glasses, and you look so quaint at the piano. Do play, my dear!” pleaded Lettie.
“Nay,” said my mother, “the touch of the old keys on my fingers is making me sentimental — you wouldn’t like to see me reduced to the tears of old age?”
“Old age!” scolded Lettie, kissing her again. “You are young enough to play little romances. Tell us about it, Mother.”
“About what, child?”
“When you used to play.”
“Before my fingers were stiff with fifty-odd years? Where have you been, Cyril, that you weren’t in to dinner?”
“Only down to Strelley Mill,” said I.
“Of course,” said Mother coldly.
“Why ‘of course’?” I asked.
“And you came away as soon as Em went to school?” said Lettie.
“I did,” said I.
They were cross with me, these two women. After I had swallowed my little resentment I said:
“They would have me stay to dinner.”
My mother vouchsafed no reply.
“And has the great George found a girl yet?” asked Lettie. “No,” I replied, “he never will at this rate. Nobody will ever be good enough for him.”
“I’m sure I don’t know what you can find in any of them to take you there so much,” said my mother.
“Don’t be so mean, Mater,” I answered, nettled. “You know I like them.”
“I know you like her,” said my mother sarcastically. “As for him — he’s an unlicked cub. What can you expect when his mother has spoiled him as she has. But I wonder you are so interested in licking him.” My mother sniffed contemptuously.
“He is rather good-looking,” said Lettie with a smile.
“You could make a man of him, I am sure,” I said, bowing satirically to her.
“I am not interested,” she replied, also satirical.
Then she tossed her head, and all the fine hairs that were free from bonds made a mist of yellow light in the sun. “What frock shall I wear, Mater?” she asked.
“Nay, don’t ask me,” replied her mother.
“I think I’ll wear the heliotrope — though this sun will fade it,” she said pensively. She was tall, nearly six feet in height, but slenderly formed. Her hair was yellow, tending towards a dun brown. She had beautiful eyes and brows, but not a nice nose. Her hands were very beautiful.
“Where are you going?” I asked.
She did not answer me.
“To Tempest’s!” I said. She did not reply.
“Well, I don’t know what you can see in him,” I continued. “Indeed!” said she. “He’s as good as most folk —” then we both began to laugh.
“Not,” she continued blushing, “that I think anything about him. I’m merely going for a game of tennis. Are you coming?”
“What shall you say if I agree?” I asked.
“Oh!” she tossed her head. “We shall all be very pleased I’m sure.”
“Ooray!” said I with fine irony.
She