“I’ve known worse,” he replied coolly.
She closed the door behind her, as though she knew something of Mrs. Inglethorne’s irrepressible curiosity.
“I never expected I should see you again,” she said, declining with a gesture the chair he pushed forward to her; “but having given the matter a great deal of thought, I have decided that I ought to do something for you. I am buying and stocking a small farm for you in Western Canada, and I am making you a small allowance to enable you to live, even if the farm fails, as it probably will. You will leave for Quebec on Saturday week; I have booked a second-class passage for you.” And, when he was about to speak: “I don’t want you to thank me. I shall feel happier when you have left the country. You have brought everlasting disgrace upon your father’s name, and I do not wish to be reminded constantly of the fact.”
Here she stopped.
“You were altogether wrong when you thought I was about to thank you,” he said quietly. “In the first place, I have no intention of accepting your charity, and in the second place, I have no aptitude for farming either in Canada or in England.”
“I have booked your passage,” she said, with an air of finality.
“Then there will be a vacant bed going cheap on the Atlantic Ocean!” replied Peter with a half-smile.
She looked round the room contemptuously, and again her eyes went to the table.
“So you’d rather do this waster’s work?”
“Waster’s work, I agree,” he nodded; “but infinitely more intellectual than mending boots or washing convicts’ laundry—my last occupation. I expect nothing from you, mother. For some reason which I have never quite understood, you have hated me ever since I was a child. I have no wish to reproach you with being ‘unnatural.’ You have been under the thumb of Anita Bellini ever since I can remember.”
“How dare you!” Her voice was vibrant with anger. “ ‘Under the thumb!’ What do you mean?”
“I only know that Anita Bellini has withered every good feeling in every good woman who has been brought into contact with her. I only know that she is evil—what hold she has over you, God knows. It has been sufficiently strong to rob me of the one gift which is every man’s right—a mother’s love. I dare say that sounds a piece of sickly sentimentality, but it is a big thing—a very big thing.”
“You have had what you deserved,” she interrupted brusquely. “And I did not come here to discuss my duty. If you prefer to go to Australia instead of Canada—”
“I prefer Lambeth to either place at the moment,” he said coldly.
She shrugged her shoulders ever so slightly.
“You have made your bed and you must lie on it. I have done all that is humanly possible, more than could be expected, remembering how you have humiliated me and made my name—”
“My father’s name,” he corrected.
He got under her guard there, and to his wonder the comment to which irritation drove him produced a remarkable effect. Her face flushed; the hard mouth grew harder.
“Your father’s name is my name,” she said harshly.
Her eyes were blazing; he had never seen her so moved.
“I will give you twenty thousand pounds to leave the country,” she said. “That is my final offer.”
He shook his head.
“I shall never want money from you,” he said, and, walking to the door, opened it, and she left the room without another glance at him.
Why had she come? He wasted half an hour of precious time puzzling over this extraordinary action on her part. He had spoken no more than the truth when he had said that from his childhood she had displayed an antagonism towards him which, in maturity, had puzzled him more than any other experience in his life. Antagonistic? She hated him! And, curiously enough, his father had known of her feeling, and though he had never made any direct reference to the enmity, had gone out of his way to make up for the affection the mother denied him. It was his father with whom he had corresponded throughout the days of the war; his father who had met him when he came home from France on leave; his father who had come day after day to the hospital to sit by the bedside of his wounded son; and when Peter had been discharged from the army, it was Donald who had found him the secretaryship, and had planned for him a great career in the world of politics. It was a puzzle beyond unravelment. Peter took up his pen again and tried, by a concentration of his exigent present, to forget the bitter past.
It was twelve o’clock when he put down his pen and rubbed his cramped hands. Throwing up the window to let out the smoke, he munched a biscuit and meditated; and then his face brightened, and his thoughts went unresistingly towards Leslie Maughan. Then through the open window he heard unsteady steps coming along the paved sidewalk. It paused before the door of the house; there was a rattle of the key. Mrs. Inglethorne often went out at night, and as often returned with that same unsteady footstep. Presently the door slammed, and her muttering came up to him from the passage.
It was the first time he had seen or heard her that day. Usually, she did not go out at nights, but stayed at home to receive the curious callers who came at odd moments. They always knocked once with the knocker, and once with the flat of their hands, and generally they carried a parcel or package, big or small. There was a whispered colloquy in the passage, the chink of money, or, more rarely, the rustle of Treasury notes, and they went out again—without their parcels. This, Peter had seen and had not seen. Prison had taught him the wisdom of blindness,
