“I won’t have Fossette laughed at,” Sophia warned him.
“No, seriously,” he said, in his quality of an amateur of dogs; “she is very fine.” Even then he could not help adding: “What you can see of her!”
Whereupon Sophia shook her head, deprecating such wit. Sophia was very lenient towards him. Her leniency could be perceived in her eyes, which followed his movements all the time. “Do you think he is like me, Constance?” she asked.
“I wish I was half as good-looking,” said Cyril, quickly; and Constance said:
“As a baby he was very like you. He was a handsome baby. He wasn’t at all like you when he was at school. These last few years he’s begun to be like you again. He’s very much changed since he left school; he was rather heavy and clumsy then.”
“Heavy and clumsy!” exclaimed Sophia. “Well, I should never have believed it!”
“Oh, but he was!” Constance insisted.
“Now, mater,” said Cyril, “it’s a pity you don’t want that cake cutting into. I think I could have eaten a bit of that cake. But of course if it’s only for show … !”
Constance sprang up, seizing a knife.
“You shouldn’t tease your mother,” Sophia told him. “He doesn’t really want any, Constance; he’s regularly stuffed himself.”
And Cyril agreed, “No, no, mater, don’t cut it; I really couldn’t. I was only gassing.”
But Constance could never clearly see through humour of that sort. She cut three slices of cake, and she held the plate towards Cyril.
“I tell you I really couldn’t!” he protested.
“Come!” she said obstinately. “I’m waiting! How much longer must I hold this plate?”
And he had to take a slice. So had Sophia. When she was roused, they both of them had to yield to Constance.
With the dogs, and the splendour of the tea-table under the gas, and the distinction of Sophia and Cyril, and the conversation, which on the whole was gay and free, rising at times to jolly garrulity, the scene in her parlour ought surely to have satisfied Constance utterly. She ought to have been quite happy, as her sciatica had raised the siege for a space. But she was not quite happy. The circumstances of Cyril’s arrival had disturbed her; they had in fact wounded her, though she would scarcely admit the wound. In the morning she had received a brief letter from Cyril to say that he had not been able to come, and vaguely promising, or half-promising, to run down at a later date. That letter had the cardinal defects of all Cyril’s relations with his mother; it was casual, and it was not candid. It gave no hint of the nature of the obstacle which had prevented him from coming. Cyril had always been too secretive. She was gravely depressed by the letter, which she did not show to Sophia, because it impaired her dignity as a mother, and displayed her son in a bad light. Then about eleven o’clock a telegram had come for Sophia.
“That’s all right,” Sophia had said, on reading it. “He’ll be here this evening!” And she had handed over the telegram, which read—
“Very well. Will come same train today.”
And Constance learned that when Sophia had rushed out just before tea on the previous evening, it was to telegraph to Cyril.
“What did you say to him?” Constance asked.
“Oh!” said Sophia, with a careless air, “I told him I thought he ought to come. After all, you’re more important than any business, Constance! And I don’t like him behaving like that. I was determined he should come!”
Sophia had tossed her proud head.
Constance had pretended to be pleased and grateful. But the existence of a wound was incontestable. Sophia, then, could do more with Cyril than she could! Sophia had only met him once, and could simply twist him round her little finger. He would never have done so much for his mother. A fine sort of an obstacle it must have been, if a single telegram from Sophia could overcome it … ! And Sophia, too, was secretive. She had gone out and had telegraphed, and had not breathed a word until she got the reply, sixteen hours later. She was secretive, and Cyril was secretive. They resembled one another. They had taken to one another. But Sophia was a curious mixture. When Constance had asked her if she should go to the station again to meet Cyril, she had replied scornfully: “No, indeed! I’ve done going to meet Cyril. People who don’t arrive must not expect to be met.”
When Cyril drove up to the door, Sophia had been in attendance. She hurried down the steps. “Don’t say anything about my telegram,” she had rapidly whispered to Cyril; there was no time for further explanation. Constance was at the top of the steps. Constance had not heard the whisper, but she had seen it; and she saw a guilty, puzzled look on Cyril’s face, afterwards an ineffectively concealed conspiratorial look on both their faces. They had “something between them,” from which she, the mother, was shut out! Was it not natural that she should be wounded? She was far too proud to mention the telegrams. And as neither Cyril nor Sophia mentioned them, the circumstances leading to Cyril’s change of plan were not referred to at all, which was very curious. Then Cyril was more sociable than he had ever been; he was different, under his aunt’s gaze. Certainly he treated his mother faultlessly. But Constance said to herself: “It is because she is here that he is so specially nice to me.”
When tea was finished and they were going upstairs to the drawing room, she asked him, with her eye on the “Stag at Eve” engraving:
“Well, is it a success?”
“What?” His eye followed hers. “Oh, you’ve changed it! What did you do that for, mater?”
“You said it would be better like that,” she reminded him.
“Did I?” He seemed genuinely surprised. “I don’t remember. I believe it is better,
