Hugh's face wrinkled at her sharp words and he bowed his head with an air of vexed humility. He said, 'Of course, you must understand that I've just been raving to you in order to clear my head of poisonous fumes. Now I expect I've shocked you. You're so honest and simple yourself, you probably don't realize what fantasies, and what duplicities can reside in the bosoms of — quite ordinary people. Perhaps I oughtn't to have troubled you. He closed his lips, biting them into a hard line. She had hurt him.
While Mildred gained control of herself by taking some deep breaths and a mouthful of whisky he went on in a more conciliatory tone, 'You speak to me, as you always do, with the voice of reality. That's why I summoned you, I suppose. Of course, I never seriously thought I would sell the picture. It would be wickedly unfair to Ann and Sarah. And it would be very bad for Randall. That s the main point really. It would deprave Randall.
Mildred got up and went to the window. She blinked at the pale hazy light and the lines of the rain. If only she could think. She said, 'Wait a minute, wait a minute.
Before her own interests had come with such violence upon the scene she had seen things clearly. Now all was stirred up and confused. Almost laboriously she worked it out. If Hugh sold the picture Felix would get Ann. If Hugh did not sell the picture she would get Hugh. That was what it came to.
Mildred was not the first to feel doubts of a good cause when she saw that it was also to her advantage. Or rather, when she saw this, she began to think more passionately about the advantages of others. And she was acutely and increasingly conscious of her power to silence Hugh and of Hugh's wish to be influenced. It was clear I that what had racked Hugh all night was an overwhelming desire to sell the picture. Yet at the same time he saw the moral obstacles as insuperable. And he saw justly.
Mildred knew that whatever she said she must say it quickly and it had better be to the point. But where was the point? She didn't. want to make up Hugh's mind for him now. She wanted to keep it in the balance, to keep it wavering, to give her time to reflect further. But he seemed already to have helped him to his decision. What was there, more subtly, to be said on the other side? She tried desperately to see the thing as Hugh saw it, to see Randall as Hugh saw him. She said, 'And yet as you said — it's complicated. I can well understand your desire to set Randall free, to give. him suddenly perfect freedom.
'Well yes' said Hugh with alacrity, getting up from where he had been hunched in an attitude of rather sulky gloom. Yes. There's that in it too, I suppose.
'And to do it with no ungenerous hand, said Mildred, 'to do it with a reckless hand.
'Reckless, he said 'Yes. He joined her by the window and looked lip at the misty dome which hung before them like some southern cupola in a painting by Turner. His eye glowed at a hidden thought.
I have touched the right place, thought Mildred. Let me think of a few more epithets. She felt by now a little reckless herself. 'I can see, she said, 'that, in a way, you want to do something extravagant and foolish for Randall. You want to help Randall to do something extravagant and foolish.
'Yes, said Hugh. 'In a way. He added, 'I was never myself — extravagant and foolish.
That's it, is it, thought Mildred. I should have seen it sooner. She meditated. And as she estimated the complex strength of Hugh's motives she thought with a passing wail of despair for herself: he will surely sell the picture.
'You see, said Hugh, now, assisted by the wind which Mildred had puffed so heartily into his sails, getting going on the other tack, 'if one were to look at it from that side, it isn't as if the girls would be at all hardly done by, Ann and Sarah I mean. They'll get quite a lot anyway'.
'And Ann might always marry again, I suppose, said Mildred.
Then she thought this was incautious. She did not want to confuse Hugh's simple mind with hints of further complications.
She need not have worried. Hugh said, shaking his head, 'Oh, I doubt it. Who would want to marry poor Ann?
Mildred felt that by now she had had enough. She was confident that she had set the balance level. She was confident too that whatever she might decide as a result of her further reflections she could make Hugh decide too. She wanted to get away and reflect. She said abruptly, 'I must go'.
She went back to pick up her gloves and bag which she had laid on the mantelpiece underneath the Tintoretto. She looked up at the gorgeous valuable trouble-making object. Hugh followed her saying, 'Mildred, I can't tell you how grateful —
'But I haven't decided anything yet, said Mildred. 'I mean, you haven't decided anything. There are too many factors, Hugh. I saw the thing too simply at first. You were quite right to hesitate. It's a big decision. You don't have to make it in a hurry. You really must reflect further, don't you think?
'Reflect further, well, yes, perhaps, said Hugh eagerly. 'But you'll help me reflect, won't you? You don't feel imposed upon, do you, Mildred? You've understood it all so quickly and so well. You help me marvellously to know what I think.
'I'll help you if you want it, said Mildred. 'I'll always help you if you want it. She took her things.
'Ah, my dear Mildred, said Hugh, suddenly rapt into a soft dream lid taking hold of the mantelpiece. 'If you only knew! To be at my age so foolishly in love!
Mildred felt her tears coming now. There was no resisting them.
She turned half about and saw that the rain had stopped and it was a little brighter outside. To conceal her filling eyes she reached up and switched out the light above the picture.
Chapter Twenty
'AND what will Hugh decide?
'He'll decide what I tell him to decide. Felix was exceedingly upset by Mildred's story, and was upset too by her manner of telling it. Yet he could not help pausing, as he so often did at moments when he most apprehended her difference from himself, to admire his sister. She had presented the issues with a ruthless frankness which he respected though it made him shrink. She was in the more delicate affairs of life, positively military.
They were in the drawing-room at Seton Blaise. The weather had reestablished itself and out of a sky sparsely scattered with small white clouds a fairly determined sun shone upon the mid-summer garden which, refreshed by recent rains and now dried by sunshine and a gentle west wind, combined a clean matutinal freshness with the luxuriance of a tropical forest.
'Of course, said Felix, 'none of your predictions is certain. They have already been over the ground a number of times.
'You want to know the future in detail, said Mildred. 'Perhaps soldiers always do. But the future isn't like that. She spoke in a tired way and sat down on the window-seat in the bow-window. The sunlight found the faded yellow in her untidy fluff of grey hair. Although it was evening she was still wearing the tweeds in which she had arrived post haste from London.
'It is when it comes to it, said Felix gloomily. 'That's the trouble. Don't be metaphysical. One can only go by probabilities. She pulled a white foxglove out of the vase on the table and began switching it nervously about.
Felix, who had been wandering about the room, paused by the window. Outside, Humphrey could be seen, remote on the far side of the stream, motionless, as if he had been put there by a painter, facing the house with head thrown back in the attitude of one expecting to be addressed at any moment by a cry or a shot. His white hair made a vivid highlight in the unbroken greenness of the scene.
'What a trio weare! said Mildred, following his glance. 'All of us in love! And poor Humphrey always wanting not only the unmentionable but the unattainable! But at least Humpo tries. He deploys his resources.
'Anyway the probabilities are not the point, said Felix. He set off gain, receding into the dimmer part of the room which was rich and hazy with summer light.
'What else is the point, for heaven's sake? said Mildred. 'Haven't we agreed that you have more chance of Ann if Randall goes than I have of Hugh if Randall stays? She began to dismember the foxglove.
Felix did not like this way of putting it. He did not like this degree of explicitness at all. And he was appalled as well as impressed by Mildred's grasp of the present issue simply as a conflict between her merits and his.
'I mean, he said, 'we are not thinking about it in the right way . Isn't the main question one about Hugh and Randall? And isn't it plain that what Hugh proposes to do is something impossible, simply not done?
