He was talking really to himself, but was recalled to his mother by the tears which, he suddenly perceived, were distorting her face.
“And so,” she whispered, her voice choked, “we women get left. …”
He looked away from her, a little exasperated. She cried so easily and so superfluously, and he knew that these tears were more for herself than for Neville. And she didn’t really come into what he had been saying at all; he had been talking about brains.
“It’s all right as far as most women are concerned,” he said. “Most women have no brains to be spoilt. Neville had. Most women could do nothing at all with life if they didn’t produce children; it’s their only possible job. They’ve no call to feel ill-used.”
“Of course,” she said, unsteadily, struggling to clear her voice of tears, “I know you children all think I’m a fool. But there was a time when I read difficult books with your father … he, a man with a first-class mind, cared to read with me and discuss with me. …”
“Oh yes, yes, mother, I know.”
Jim and all of them knew all about those long-ago difficult books. They knew too about the clever friends who used to drop in and talk. … If only Mrs. Hilary could have been one of the nice, jolly, refreshing people who own that they never read and never want to. All this fuss about reading, and cleverness—how tedious it was! As if being stupid mattered, as if it was worth bothering about.
“Of course we don’t think you a fool, mother dear; how could we?”
Jim was kind and affectionate, never ironic, like Gilbert, or impatient, like Nan. But he felt now the need for fresh air; the arbour was too small for him and Mrs. Hilary, who was as tiring to others as to herself.
“I think I shall go and interrupt Neville over her studies,” said Jim, and left the arbour.
Mrs. Hilary looked after him, painfully loving his square, straight back, his fine dark head, just flecked with grey, the clean line of his profile, with the firm jaw clenched over the pipe. To have produced Jim—wasn’t that enough to have lived for? Mrs. Hilary was one of those mothers who apply the Magnificat to their own cases. She always felt a bond of human sympathy between herself and that lady called the Virgin Mary, whom she thought overestimated.
III
Neville raised heavy violet eyes, faintly ringed with shadows, to Jim as he came into the library. She looked at him for a moment absently, then smiled. He came over to her and looked at the book before her.
“Working? Where’ve you got to? Let’s see how much you know.”
He took the book from her and glanced at it to see what she had been reading.
“Now we’ll have an examination; it’ll be good practice for you.”
He put a question, and she answered it, frowning a little.
“H’m. That’s not very good, my dear.”
He tried again; this time she could not answer at all. At the third question she shook her head.
“It’s no use, Jimmy. My head’s hopeless this afternoon. Another time.”
He shut the book.
“Yes. So it seems. … You’re overdoing it, Neville. You can’t go on like this.”
She lay back and spread out her hands hopelessly.
“But I must go on like this if I’m ever going to get through my exams.”
“You’re not going to, old thing. You’re quite obviously unfitted to. It’s not your job any more. It’s absurd to try; really it is.”
Neville shut her eyes.
“Doctors … doctors. They have it on the brain—the limitations of the feminine organism.”
“Because they know something about it. But I’m not speaking of the feminine organism just now. I should say the same to Rodney if he thought of turning doctor now, after twenty years of politics.”
“Rodney never could have been a doctor. He hates messing about with bodies.”
“Well, you know what I think. I can’t stop you, of course. It’s only a question of time, in any case. You’ll soon find out for yourself that it’s no use.”
“I think,” she answered, in her small, unemotional voice, “that it’s exceedingly probable that I shall.”
She lay inertly in the deep chair, her eyes shut, her hands opened, palms downwards, as if they had failed to hold something.
“What then, Jim? If I can’t be a doctor what can I be? Besides Rodney’s wife, I mean? I don’t say besides the children’s mother, because that’s stopped being a job. They’re charming to me, the darlings, but they don’t need me any more; they go their own way.”
Jim had noticed that.
“Well, after all, you do a certain amount of political work—public speaking, meetings, and so on. Isn’t that enough?”
“That’s all secondhand. I shouldn’t do it but for Rodney. I’m not public-spirited enough. If Rodney dies before I do, I shan’t go on with that. … Shall I just be a silly, self-engrossed, moping old woman, no use to anyone and a plague to myself?”
The eyes of both of them strayed out to the garden.
“Who’s the silly moping old woman?” asked Mrs. Hilary’s voice in the doorway. And there she stood, leaning a little forward, a strained smile on her face.
“Me, mother, when I shall be old,” Neville quickly answered her, smiling in return. “Come in, dear. Jim’s telling me how I shall never be a doctor. He gave me a viva voce exam, and I came a mucker over it.”
Her voice had an edge of bitterness; she hadn’t liked coming a mucker, nor yet being told
