Man-woman relationships -- Fiction; Marriage -- Fiction
The house was hushed. It was some hours since they had climbed the
stairs. He crept out of his room into the one that had been hers. It was
the same as when, years ago, they two had shared it. He gazed across the
lamp-lit gulf to where Hampstead lay shrouded beneath the night. And
he remembered: the moon letting down her silver ladder and bidding him
ascend; the windows in streets he had never traversed, which had seemed
to watch him like the eyes of cats; the mysterious whistling from the
powder-cupboard, “Coming! Coming! Coming!”
He tried, as of old, to eliminate barriers by the magic of imagination.
It was true, surely, and he hadn't grown up. Soon he would hear the
angel whistle. On the straight unruffled bed he would see the gentle
little body, with the tumbled honey-colored hair.
He forgot his promise not to break his heart about her. Throwing himself
down, he knelt beside the pillow, with his empty arms spread out.
A sound! Someone was holding him--someone who, coming on the same
errand, had discovered him. “Peterkins! Peterkins, don't cry.”
His arms went about her neck. “Little mother, it's long since you called
me that. I'm so tired--tired of pretending to be brave and trying to be
a man.”
They sent for Jehane next day and the next; at last they had to go
and fetch her. Her heart was hard because of the disgrace of what had
happened. She spoke with bitterness of her children. Glory's joining her
stepfather at The Winged Thrush she construed as an act of treachery. “A
daughter of mine,” she said, “serving in a public-house!” She had given
up all hope that Eustace would ever ask her to come to Canada. His
infrequent letters had given her to understand tacitly that she was
not wanted. Only Moggs was left--a subdued child, a little like Glory.
Against disappointment from that quarter Jehane forearmed herself by
taking disappointment for granted. Her sense of injustice centered in
the paradox that Ocky was happy, despite his mismanagement, while she,
after all her painstaking rectitude, was sad.
Throughout the journey to Topbury she insisted vigorously that she would
never take Riska back. As she entered the hall of his house, Barrington
heard the last repetition of her assertion. “We don't want you to,” he
said; “she and her child are going to live with us.” Then Jehane saw
Riska, and recognized the change; promptly she turned her accusals
against herself. She had been unwise. She had spoilt her life both
as wife and mother. Her calamities were her own doing. She needed
Riska--wanted her. “You'll come with your mother, won't you?”
Riska shook her head gently--so gently that for a minute she looked like
Glory. “Mother dear, I can't. I would if it were only myself; I've baby
to consider. You'd do for him just what you've done----. You couldn't
help it. I'm going to stay here with Aunt Nan and learn--learn to be
like her--like Kay.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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