But how are you? You're looking much better than I expected you would.'
'I'm very well,' said Henry; 'London suits me, you know, always did.'
He plunged into an account of his travels and the people he had met, and for the first time in his life Herbert saw in Henry a likeness to their mother. Like her he chatted of trivialities, being amusing for the sake of being amusing, exaggerating often, skimming over the surface of things because it was easier than finding the depths. Herbert wanted to know what was really in his brother's heart, if he suffered less-he had exchanged many letters with Tom Callaghan on the subject-but every time he tried to sound him Henry evaded the issue, and talked about something else.
Henry was building a defence about himself that would be hard to penetrate. Perhaps the children would draw him out of this, bring back the old Henry with his true charm, his unselfishness, his unaffected gaiety.
Herbert left after tea, so that Henry could be alone with the children, and they came down about six o'clock, washed and changed, carrying books under their arms as they had always done at Clonmere. It made a pain at once, that they should so instinctively remember their routine, and he began to question them about Lletharrog and all they had done-anything rather than that Molly should sit down, as she used to do, with Hal and Kitty on footstools, and open the book. They chatted for a while politely, like small visitors, and then Molly, leaning against his arm, said: 'Would you read, father? Like mamma used to do. Then it will be just like being at home again.'
And she settled herself on the arm of his chair, with easy confidence, while a smile of anticipation lit up the eager, white face of Hal. Henry took up the book and cleared his throat, hardly seeing the print, feeling inadequate, helpless, a sham before his children. The story was one that he remembered Katherine reading to them very often at Clonmere, and as he read, not taking in the words or the meaning, he wondered how it was that the very familiarity of the proceeding, the memory of the words, did not tear their hearts with pain, as it did his. The old ways, the old routine, which to him were now agony and unendurable, were something to which they clung for security. He wanted to lose the memory of that world; they wished to hold it.
He read for two or three pages, and then he could bear it no longer. It seemed to him a mockery of the time that was gone. The children might live in the world of what-used-to-be; they must live in it alone.
'I'm afraid I'm not very good at reading aloud,' he said, 'my throat gets sore. You'll have to do it instead, Molly.'
'That won't be the same,' said Hal quickly.
'Molly is only our sister. She can read to us in the schoolroom.'
'Perhaps father would rather play a game,' said Kitty.
'We have Happy Families. I know where it is, on the top of the toy-trunk.'
She ran away upstairs to fetch the cards.
Hal busied himself carrying a table into the middle of the room.
'I wish we had a piano,' said Molly.
'I've been learning while we stayed with Uncle Herbert. I shan't be able to practise here without one.'
'I'll get you one,' said Henry.
'When we go home, Molly can play on mamma's piano,' said Hal. 'It was so very soft.
Uncle Herbert's piano banged a bit. How long are we going to be in this house? Until the summer holidays?'
Henry got up from his chair, and moved restlessly towards the mantelpiece.
'We shall be here indefinitely,' he said. 'You must all learn to look upon this house as home, now you are getting older. You'll be going to school, Hal, next term. I'm not certain about the holidays.
Perhaps we might all go and stay with Aunt Eliza in Saunby.'
The children stared at him aghast. Kitty, who had returned with the cards, stood on one leg, biting the end of her hair.
'Aren't we ever going home to Clonmere again?' she said.
Henry avoided their eyes. He did not know what to say.
'Yes, of course… sometime,' he said, 'but it's let at the moment; I thought perhaps they would have told you at Lletharrog. Some people called Boles, friends of Uncle Bill and Aunt Fanny, are living there.'
The children went on looking at him without understanding.
'Other people?' said Hal. 'Living in our home?
Using our things? They won't touch mamma's piano, will they?'
'No,' said Henry, 'no, I'm sure they won't.'
'How long are they going to be there?' asked Molly.
Each one of them looked shaken and distressed. He had not realised that they were so fond of their home. He thought that children liked change, enjoyed variety. He began to feel irritated. They were staring at him as though he were in some way to blame.
'I don't know,' he said, 'it depends upon their plans.'
He had not the courage to tell them that Clonmere had been let to the Boles for seven years.
'There are many advantages in London,' he said, smiling, and talking rather swiftly. 'You two girls will be able to go to dancing classes, and music lessons, and all that sort of thing. And meet other children. Hal must learn to find his level with other boys, before he goes to Eton. All your uncles agreed with me that London was much the best place for education. There will be plenty for you all to do. And I promise you that I'll give you whatever you want.'
He felt as though he were pleading with them, that they were his judges. Why should he feel this? They were only children, Molly not yet thirteen. 'I want to do what is best for all of you,' he said. 'I think, I'm certain in fact, that this is what mamma would have wished.'
The children did not say anything. Kitty slowly shuffled the pack of Happy Families. Hal drew imaginary lines on the table. Molly reached for the pack of cards from Kitty, and handed them to Henry.
'Will you deal, father?' she said.
They drew their chairs to the table, and as he dealt out the cards he could feel the constraint amongst them.
The pleasure was gone and they were strangers, being polite to one another for courtesy's sake.
'I've hurt them,' thought Henry. 'I've broken their faith in some way. And there's no one to tell me what to say, what to do.'
He could feel their eyes upon him as he pretended to examine his cards….
'They'll forget all about it,' he told himself; 'children accustom themselves to everything. That's the blessing of being a child.'
And as the months passed Henry felt this to be true, because none of them even mentioned the idea of going home again. They were content, he decided, and because he wanted to believe this, he never questioned them, for fear that they should tell him they were unhappy, The months became one, two years, and except for occasional visits to Saunby and Lletharrog they did not leave the house in London.
The girls attended classes, Hal went to school, the little Lizette learnt to talk and to walk, limping on her poor club foot that could not be straightened. Henry, restless, uncertain, feeling that his children needed a deeper understanding than he could give them, evaded responsibility by giving them presents; while in his heart all the while there was a feeling that what he did and what he gave them brought them no closer to him.
When a letter came to him from his mother in the spring of '74, condoling with him on the death of Aunt Eliza at Saunby and asking for a rather larger cheque than usual, Henry determined, quite suddenly, to go out to Nice and stay with her.
He had not seen her for nearly seven years.
Perhaps, at last, he would be able to persuade her to return and live with them. The truth was that he was lonely, in mind and body and soul, and Molly at fifteen was still too young to be a true companion. The thought of his mother's gaiety, her wit and her charm, seemed all the more endearing after an absence of seven years. Surely she, more than anyone in the world, would understand this feeling of unbearable loneliness, that became worse, not easier, as the years passed?
He went to France the day after he had seen Hal safely off to his first half at Eton.
The air was brilliant in Nice and the sun shone.
He called a porter, and collecting his baggage, went in search of a fiacre to drive him to the villa.
No attempt on his mother's part to meet him at the station. She had probably forgotten the day of his arrival.
