So it was a detestable journey. And the second night in the train was worse than the first. For the Germans, would you believe it, shut both windows while the English were asleep, and the English, true to their caste and race, woke with bad headaches.
II
When they got to Rome in the morning Mrs. Hilary felt thoroughly ill. She had to strive hard for self-control; it would not do to meet Nan in an unnerved, collapsed state. All her psychical strength was necessary to deal with Nan. So when she stood on the platform with her luggage she looked and felt not only like one who has slept (but not much) in a train for two nights and fought with Germans about windows but also like an elderly virgin martyr (spiritually tense and strung-up, and distraught, and on the line between exultation and hysteria).
Nan was there. Nan, pale and pinched, and looking plain in the nipping morning air, though wrapped in a fur coat. (One of the points about Nan was that, though she sometimes looked plain, she never looked dowdy; there was always a distinction, a chic, about her.)
Nan kissed her mother and helped with the luggage and got a cab. Nan was good at railway stations and such places. Mrs. Hilary was not.
They drove out into the hideous new streets. Mrs. Hilary shivered.
“Oh, how ugly!”
“Rome is ugly, this part.”
“It’s worse since ’99.”
But she did not really remember clearly how it had looked in ’99. The old desire to pose, to show that she knew something, took her. Yet she felt that Nan, who knew that she knew next to nothing, would not be deceived.
“Oh … the Forum!”
“The Forum of Trajan,” Nan said. “We don’t pass the Roman Forum on the way to our street.”
“The Forum of Trajan, of course, I meant that.”
But she knew that Nan knew she had meant the Forum Romanum.
“Rome is always Rome,” she said, which was safer than identifying particular buildings, or even Forums, in it. “Nothing like it anywhere.”
“How long can you stay, mother? I’ve got you a room in the house I’m lodging in. It’s in a little street the other side of the Corso. Rather a medieval street, I’m afraid. That is, it smells. But the rooms are clean.”
“Oh, I’m not staying long. … We’ll talk later; talk it all out. A thorough talk. When we get in. After a cup of tea. …”
Mrs. Hilary remembered that Nan did not yet know why she had come. After a cup of strong tea. … A cup of tea first. … Coffee wasn’t the same. One needed tea, after those awful Germans. She told Nan about these. Nan knew that she would have had tiresome travelling companions; she always did; if it weren’t Germans it would be inconsiderate English. She was unlucky.
“Go straight to bed and rest when we get in,” Nan advised; but she shook her head. “We must talk first.”
Nan, she thought, looked pinched about the lips, and thin, and her black brows were at times nervous and sullen. Nan did not look happy. Was it guilt, or merely the chill morning air?
They stopped at a shabby old house in a narrow medieval street in the Borgo, which had been a palace and was now let in apartments. Here Nan had two bare, gilded, faded rooms. Mrs. Hilary sat by a charcoal stove in one of them, and Nan made her some tea. After the tea Mrs. Hilary felt revived. She wouldn’t go to bed; she felt that the time for the talk had come. She looked round the room for signs of Stephen Lumley, but all the signs she saw were of Nan; Nan’s books, Nan’s proofs strewing the table. Of course that bad man wouldn’t come while she was there. He was no doubt waiting eagerly for her to be gone. Probably they both were. …
III
“Nan—” They were still sitting by the stove, and Nan was lighting a cigarette. “Nan—do you guess why I’ve come?”
Nan threw away the match.
“No, mother. How should I? … One does come to Rome, I suppose, if one gets a chance.”
“Oh, I’ve not come to see Rome. I know Rome. Long before you were born. … I’ve come to see you. And to take you back with me.”
Nan glanced at her quickly, a sidelong glance of suspicion and comprehension. Her lower lip projected stubbornly.
“Ah, I see you know what I mean. Yes, I’ve heard. Rumours reached us—it was through Rosalind, of course. And I’m afraid … I’m afraid that for once she spoke the truth.”
“Oh no, she didn’t. I don’t know what Rosalind’s been saying this time, but it would be odd if it was the truth.”
“Nan, it’s no use denying things. I know.”
It was true; she did know. A few months ago she would have doubted and questioned; but Mr. Cradock had taught her better. She had learnt from him the simple truth about life; that is, that nearly everyone is nearly always involved up to the eyes in the closest relationship with someone of another sex. It is nature’s way with mankind. Another thing she had learnt from him was that the more they denied it the more it was so; protests of innocence and admissions of guilt were alike proofs of the latter. So she was accurate when she said that it was no use for Nan to deny anything. It was no use whatever.
Nan had become cool and sarcastic—her nastiest, most dangerous manner.
“Do you think you would care to be a little more explicit, mother? I’m afraid I don’t quite follow. What is it no use my denying? What do you know?”
Mrs. Hilary gathered herself together. Her head trembled and jerked with emotion; wisps of her hair, tousled by the night, escaped over her collar. She spoke tremulously, tensely, her hands wrung together.
“That you are going
