XXXIII
Mrs. Vincent made many pilgrimages out of the sickroom that day; her mind was disturbed and restless; she could not keep still by Susan’s side. She went and strayed through her son’s rooms, looked at his books, gave a furtive glance at his linen; then went back and sat down for a little, until a renewed access of anxiety sent her wandering forth once more. Then she heard him come in, and went out to see him. But he was gloomy and uncommunicative, evidently indisposed to satisfy her in any way, absorbed in his own thoughts. Mrs. Vincent came and sat by him while he dined, thinking, in her simplicity, that it would be a pleasure to Arthur. But Arthur, with the unsocial habits of a man accustomed to live alone, had already set up a book before him while he ate, leaving his mother to wonder by herself behind what was the world of unknown thought that rapt her son, and into which her wistful wonder could not penetrate. But the widow was wise in her generation: she would not worry him with questions which it was very apparent beforehand that he did not mean to answer. She admitted to herself with a pang of mingled pain, curiosity, and resignation, that Arthur was no longer a boy having no secrets from his mother. Once more the little woman looked at the unreasonable male creature shut up within itself, and decided, with a feminine mixture of pity and awe, that it must be allowed to take its own time and way of disclosing itself, and that to torture it into premature utterance would be foolish, not to say impracticable. She left him, accordingly, to himself, and went away again, returning, however, ere long, in her vague restlessness, as she had been doing all day. The early winter evening had closed in, and the lamp was lighted—the same lamp which had smoked and annoyed Mrs. Vincent’s nice perceptions the first evening she was in Carlingford. Vincent had thrown himself on a sofa with a book, not to read, but as a disguise under which he could indulge his own thoughts, when his mother came quietly back into the room. Mrs. Vincent thought it looked dark and less cheerful than it ought. She poked the fire softly not to disturb Arthur, and made it blaze. Then she turned to the lamp, which flared huskily upon the table. “It smokes more than ever,” said Mrs. Vincent, half apologetically, in case Arthur should observe her proceedings as she took off the globe. He, as was natural, put down his book and gazed at her with a certain impatient wonder, half contemptuous of that strange female development which amid all troubles could carry through, from one crisis of life to another, that miraculous trifling, and concern itself about the smoking of a lamp. As she screwed it up and down and adjusted the wick, with the smoky light flaring upon her anxious face, and magnifying the shadow of her little figure against the wall behind, her son looked on with a feeling very similar to that which had moved Mrs. Vincent when she watched him eating his dinner with his book set up before him. These were points upon which the mother and son could not understand each other. But the sight disturbed his thoughts and touched his temper; he got up from the sofa and threw down his unread book.
“You women are incomprehensible,” said the young man, with an irritation he could not subdue—“what does it matter about the lamp? but if the world were going to pieces you must still be intent upon such trifles—leave that to the people of the house.”
“But, my dear, the people of the house don’t understand it,” said Mrs. Vincent. “Oh Arthur, it is often the trifles that are the most important. I have had Mrs. Tozer calling upon me today, and Mrs. Tufton. I don’t wonder, dear, if you find them a little tiresome; but that is what every pastor has to expect. I daresay you have been worried today paying so many visits. Hush, there is someone coming upstairs. It is Mr. Tozer, Arthur. I can hear his voice.”
Upon which the minister, conscious of not being prepared for Tozer’s questions, gave vent to an impatient ejaculation. “Never a moment’s respite! And now I shall have to give an account of myself,” said the unfortunate Nonconformist. Mrs. Vincent, who had just then finished her operations with the lamp, looked up reproachfully over the light at her son.
“Oh Arthur, consider how kind he has been! Your dear father would never have used such an expression—but you have my quick temper,” said the widow, with a little sigh. She shook hands very cordially
