“Well,” Mrs. Hilary said, sitting down on the edge of a chair, not settling herself, but looking poised to go, so as not to seem to intrude on their conversation, “well, I don’t see why you want to be a doctor, dear. Everyone knows women doctors aren’t much good. I wouldn’t trust one.”
“Very stupid of you, mother,” Jim said, trying to pretend he wasn’t irritated by being interrupted. “They’re every bit as good as men.”
“Fancy being operated on by a woman surgeon. I certainly shouldn’t risk it.”
“You wouldn’t risk it … you wouldn’t trust them. You’re so desperately personal, mother. You think that contributes to a discussion. All it does contribute to is your hearers’ knowledge of your limitations. It’s uneducated, the way you discuss.”
He smiled at her pleasantly, taking the sting out of his words, turning them into a joke, and she smiled too, to show Neville she didn’t mind, didn’t take it seriously. Jim might hurt her, but if he did no one should know but Jim himself. She knew that at times she irritated even his good temper by being uneducated and so on, so that he scolded her, but he scolded her kindly, not venomously, as Nan did.
“Well, I’ve certainly no right to be uneducated,” she said, “and I can’t say I’m ever called so, except by my children. … Do you remember the discussions father and I used to have, half through the night?”
Jim and Neville did remember and thought “Poor father,” and were silent.
“I should think,” said Mrs. Hilary, “there was very little we didn’t discuss. Politics, books, trades unions, class divisions, moral questions, votes for women, divorce … we thrashed everything out. We both thoroughly enjoyed it.”
Neville said “I remember.” Familiar echoes came back to her out of the agitated past.
“Those lazy men, all they want is to get a lot of money for doing no work.”
“I like the poor well enough in their places, but I cannot abide them when they try to step into ours.”
“Let women mind their proper business and leave men’s alone.”
“I’m certainly not going to be on calling terms with my grocer’s wife.”
“I hate these affected, posing, would-be clever books. Why can’t people write in good plain English?” …
Richard Hilary, a scholar and a patient man, blinded by conjugal love, had met futilities with arguments, expressions of emotional distaste with facts, trying to lift each absurd wrangle to the level of a discussion; and at last he died, leaving his wife with the conviction that she had been the equal mate of an able man. Her children had to face and conquer, with varying degrees of success, the temptation to undeceive her.
“But I’m interrupting,” said Mrs. Hilary. “I know you two are having a private talk. I’ll leave you alone. …”
“No, no, mother.” That was Neville, of course. “Stay and defend me from Jim’s scorn.”
How artificial one had to be in family life! What an absurd thing these emotions made of it!
Mrs. Hilary looked happier, and more settled in her chair.
“Where are Kay and Gerda?” Jim asked.
Neville told him “In Guildford, helping Barry Briscoe with W.E.A. meetings. They’re spending a lot of time over that just now; they’re both as keen as mustard. Nearly as keen as he is. He sets people on fire. It’s very good for the children. They’re bringing him up here to spend Sunday. I think he hopes every time to find Nan back again from Cornwall, poor Barry. He was very down in the mouth when she suddenly took herself off.”
“If Nan doesn’t mean to have him, she shouldn’t have encouraged him,” said Mrs. Hilary. “He was quite obviously in love with her.”
“Nan’s always a dark horse,” Neville said. “She alone knows what she means.”
Jim said “She’s a flibberty-gibbet. She’d much better get married. She’s not much use in the world at present. Now if she was a doctor … or doing something useful, like Pamela. …”
“Don’t be prejudiced, Jimmy. Because you don’t read modern novels yourself you think it’s no use their being written.”
“I read some modern novels. I read Conrad, in spite of the rather absurd attitude some people take up about him; and I read good detective stories, only they’re so seldom good. I don’t read Nan’s kind. People tell me they’re tremendously clever and modern and delightfully written and get very well reviewed, I daresay. I very seldom agree with reviewers, in any case. Even about Conrad they seem to me (when I read them—I don’t often) to pick out the wrong points to admire and to miss the points I should criticise.”
Mrs. Hilary said “Well, I must say I can’t read Nan’s books myself. Simply, I don’t think them good. I dislike all her people so much, and her style.”
“You’re a pair of old Victorians,” Neville told them, pleasing Mrs. Hilary by coupling them together and leaving Jim, who knew why she did it, undisturbed. Neville was full of graces and tact, a possession Jim had always appreciated in her.
“And there,” said Neville, who was standing at the window, “are Barry Briscoe and the children coming in.”
Jim looked over her shoulder and saw the three wheeling their bicycles up the drive.
“Gerda,” he remarked, “is a prettier thing every time I see her.”
VII
Gerda
I
It rained so hard, so much harder even than usual, that Sunday, that only Barry and Gerda went to walk. Barry walked in every kind of weather, even in the July of 1920.
Today after lunch Barry said “I’m going to walk over the downs. Anyone coming?” and Gerda got up silently, as was her habit. Kay stretched himself and yawned and said “Me for the fireside. I shall have to walk every day for three weeks after today,” for he was going tomorrow on a reading-party. Rodney and Jim
