She had got thus far in her meditations when her attention was attracted to little Braid Vardon, who was playing energetically in a corner with some object which Jane could not distinguish in the dim light.
“What have you got there, dear?” she asked.
“Wah,” said little Braid, a child of few words, proceeding with his activities.
Jane rose and walked across the room. A sudden feeling had come to her, the remorseful feeling that for some time now she had been neglecting the child. How seldom nowadays did she trouble to join in his pastimes!
“Let mother play too,” she said, gently. “What are you playing? Trains?”
“Golf.”
Jane uttered a sharp exclamation. With a keen pang she saw that what the child had got hold of was William’s spare mashie. So he had left it behind after all! Since the night of his departure it must have been lying unnoticed behind some chair or sofa.
For a moment the only sensation Jane felt was an accentuation of that desolate feeling which had been with her all day. How many a time had she stood by William and watched him foozle with this club! Inextricably associated with him it was, and her eyes filled with sudden tears. And then she was abruptly conscious of a new, a more violent emotion, something akin to panic fear. She blinked, hoping against hope that she had been mistaken. But no. When she opened her eyes and looked again she saw what she had seen before.
The child was holding the mashie all wrong.
“Braid!” gasped Jane in an agony.
All the mother-love in her was shrieking at her, reproaching her. She realized now how paltry, how greedily self-centred she had been. Thinking only of her own pleasures, how sorely she had neglected her duty as a mother! Long ere this, had she been worthy of that sacred relation, she would have been brooding over her child, teaching him at her knee the correct Vardon grip, shielding him from bad habits, seeing to it that he did not get his hands in front of the ball, putting him on the right path as regarded the slow backswing. But, absorbed in herself, she had sacrificed him to her shallow ambitions. And now there he was, grasping the club as if it had been a spade and scooping with it like one of those twenty-four-handicap men whom the hot weather brings out on seaside links.
She shuddered to the very depths of her soul. Before her eyes there rose a vision of her son, grown to manhood, reproaching her. “If you had but taught me the facts of life when I was a child, mother,” she seemed to hear him say, “I would not now be going round in a hundred and twenty, rising to a hundred and forty in anything like a high wind.”
She snatched the club from his hands with a passionate cry. And at this precise moment in came Rodney Spelvin, all ready for tea.
“Ah, little one!” said Rodney Spelvin, gaily.
Something in her appearance must have startled him, for he stopped and looked at her with concern.
“Are you ill?” he asked.
Jane pulled herself together with an effort.
“No, quite well. Ha, ha!” she replied, hysterically.
She stared at him wildly, as she might have stared at a caterpillar in her salad. If it had not been for this man, she felt, she would have been with William in their snug little cottage, a happy wife. If it had not been for this man, her only child would have been laying the foundations of a correct swing under the eyes of a conscientious pro. If it had not been for this man—She waved him distractedly to the door.
“Goodbye,” she said. “Thank you so much for calling.”
Rodney Spelvin gaped. This had been the quickest and most tealess tea-party he had ever assisted at.
“You want me to go?” he said, incredulously.
“Yes, go! go!”
Rodney Spelvin cast a wistful glance at the gate-leg table. He had had a light lunch, and the sight of the seed-cake affected him deeply. But there seemed nothing to be done. He moved reluctantly to the door.
“Well, goodbye,” he said. “Thanks for a very pleasant afternoon.”
“So glad to have seen you,” said Jane, mechanically.
The door closed. Jane returned to her thoughts. But she was not alone for long. A few minutes later there entered the female cubist painter from downstairs, a manly young woman with whom she had become fairly intimate.
“Oh, Bates, old chap!” said the cubist painter.
Jane looked up.
“Yes, Osbaldistone?”
“Just came in to borrow a cigarette. Used up all mine.”
“So have I, I’m afraid.”
“Too bad. Oh, well,” said Miss Osbaldistone, resignedly, “I suppose I’ll have to go out and get wet. I wish I had had the sense to stop Rodney Spelvin and send him. I met him on the stairs.”
“Yes, he was in here just now,” said Jane.
Miss Osbaldistone laughed in her hearty manly way.
“Good boy, Rodney,” she said, “but too smooth for my taste. A little too ready with the salve.”
“Yes?” said Jane, absently.
“Has he pulled that one on you yet about your being the original of the heroine of The Purple Fan?”
“Why, yes,” said Jane, surprised. “He did tell me that he had drawn Eulalie from me.”
Her visitor emitted another laugh that shook the samovars.
“He tells every girl he meets the same thing.”
“What?”
“Oh, yes. It’s his first move. He actually had the nerve to try to spring it on me. Mind you, I’m not saying it’s a bad stunt. Most girls like it. You’re sure you’ve no cigarettes? No? Well, how about a shot of cocaine? Out of that too? Oh, well, I’ll be going, then. Pip-pip,
