“Well!” she said, laughing, as she drew up beside him.
“Well!” He looked at her and then at the snow and the tree shadows and the great bare rocks and the blue sky, then back again at his mother. And all at once he was filled with an intense, inexplicable happiness.
“I shall never be so happy as this again,” he said to himself, when they set off once more. “Never again, even though I live to be a hundred.” He was only fifteen at the time, but that was how he felt and thought.
And his words had been prophetic. That was the last of his happiness. Afterward … No, no. He preferred not to think of afterward. Not at the moment. He poured himself out another cup of tea.
A bell rang startlingly. He went to the door of the flat and opened it. It was his mother.
“You?” Then he suddenly remembered that Lucy had said something.
“Didn’t you get my message?” Mrs. Knoyle asked anxiously.
“Yes. But I’d clean forgotten.”
“But I thought you needed …” she began. She was afraid she might have intruded, his face was so unwelcoming.
The corners of his mouth ironically twitched. “I do need,” he said. He was chronically penniless.
They passed into the other room. The windows, Mrs. Knoyle observed at a glance, were foggy with grime. On shelf and mantel the dust lay thick. Sooty cobwebs dangled from the ceiling. She had tried to get Maurice’s permission to send a woman to clean up two or three times a week. But, “None of your slumming,” he had said. “I prefer to wallow. Filth’s my natural element. Besides, I haven’t a distinguished military position to keep up.” He laughed, noiselessly, showing his big strong teeth. That was for her. She never dared to repeat her offer. But the room really did need cleaning.
“Would you like some tea?” he asked. “It’s ready. I’m just having breakfast,” he added, purposely drawing attention to the irregularities of his way of life.
She refused, without venturing any comment on the unusual breakfast hour. Spandrell was rather disappointed that he had not succeeded in drawing her. There was a long silence.
From time to time Mrs. Knoyle glanced almost surreptitiously at her son. He was staring fixedly into the empty fireplace. He looked old, she thought, and rather ill and dreadfully uncared for. She tried to recognize the child, the big schoolboy he had been in those far-off times when they were happy, just the two of them together. She remembered how distressed he used to be when she didn’t wear what he thought were the right clothes, when she wasn’t smart or failed to look her best. He was as jealously proud of her as she was of him. But the responsibility of his upbringing weighed on her heavily. The future had always frightened her; she had always been afraid of taking decisions; she had no trust in her own powers. Besides, after her husband’s death, there wasn’t much money; and she had no head for affairs, no talent for management. How to afford to send him to the university, how to get him started in life? The questions tormented her. She lay awake at night, wondering what she ought to do. Life terrified her. She had a child’s capacity for happiness, but also a child’s fears, a child’s inefficiency. When existence was a holiday, none could be more rapturously happy; but when there was business to be done, plans to be made, decisions taken, she was simply lost and terrified. And to make matters worse, after Maurice went to school she was very lonely. He was with her only in the holidays. For nine months out of the twelve she was alone, with nobody to love but her old dachshund. And at last even he failed her—fell ill, poor old beast, and had to be put out of his misery. It was shortly after poor old Fritz’s death that she first met Major Knoyle, as he then was.
“You say you brought that money?” Spandrell asked, breaking the long silence.
Mrs. Knoyle flushed. “Yes, it’s here,” she said, and opened her bag. The moment to speak had come. It was her duty to admonish, and the wad of bank notes gave her the right, the power. But the duty was odious and she had no wish to use her power. She raised her eyes and looked at him imploringly. “Maurice,” she begged, “why can’t you be reasonable? It’s such a madness, such a folly.”
Spandrell raised his eyebrows. “What’s a madness?” he asked, pretending not to know what she was talking about.
Embarrassed at being thus compelled to specify her vague reproaches, Mrs. Knoyle blushed. “You know what I mean,” she said. “This way of living. It’s bad and stupid. And such a waste, such a suicide. Besides, you’re not happy; I can see that.”
“Mayn’t I even be unhappy, if I want to?” he asked ironically.
“But do you want to make me unhappy, too?” she asked. “Because if you do, you succeed, Maurice, you succeed. You make me terribly unhappy.” The tears came into her eyes. She
