Читать книгу The Well of Loneliness - Marguerite Radclyffe Hall - Страница 28

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‘You’re home very early, Stephen,’ said Anna, but Sir Philip was staring at his daughter’s face.

‘What’s the matter?’ he inquired, and his voice sounded anxious. ‘Come here and tell me about it.’

Then Stephen quite suddenly burst into tears, and she wept and she wept as she stood there before them, and she poured out her shame and humiliation, telling all that Roger had said about her mother, telling all that she, Stephen, would have done to defend her, had it not been that Roger would not fight with a girl. She wept and she wept without any restraint, scarcely knowing what she said—at that moment not caring. And Sir Philip listened with his head on his hand, and Anna listened bewildered and dumbfounded. She tried to kiss Stephen, to hold her to her, but Stephen, still sobbing, pushed her away; in this orgy of grief she resented consolation, so that in the end Anna took her to the nursery and delivered her over to the care of Mrs. Bingham, feeling that the child did not want her.

When Anna went quietly back to the study, Sir Philip was still sitting with his head on his hand. She said: ‘It’s time you realized, Philip, that if you’re Stephen’s father, I’m her mother. So far you’ve managed the child your own way, and I don’t think it’s been successful. You’ve treated Stephen as though she were a boy—perhaps it’s because I’ve not given you a son—’ Her voice trembled a little but she went on gravely: ‘It’s not good for Stephen; I know it’s not good, and at times it frightens me, Philip.’

‘No, no!’ he said sharply.

But Anna persisted: ‘Yes, Philip, at times it makes me afraid—I can’t tell you why, but it seems all wrong—it makes me feel—strange with the child.’

He looked at her out of his melancholy eyes: ‘Can’t you trust me? Won’t you try to trust me, Anna?’

But Anna shook her head: ‘I don’t understand, why shouldn’t you trust me, Philip?’

And then in his terror for this well-beloved woman, Sir Philip committed the first cowardly action of his life—he who would not have spared himself pain, could not bear to inflict it on Anna. In his infinite pity for Stephen’s mother, he sinned very deeply and gravely against Stephen, by withholding from that mother his own conviction that her child was not as other children.

‘There’s nothing for you to understand,’ he said firmly, ‘but I like you to trust me in all things.’

After this they sat talking about the child, Sir Philip very quiet and reassuring.

‘I’ve wanted her to have a healthy body,’ he explained, ‘that’s why I’ve let her run more or less wild; but perhaps we’d better have a governess now, as you say; a French governess, my dear, if you’d prefer one—Later on I’ve always meant to engage a bluestocking, some woman who’s been to Oxford. I want Stephen to have the finest education that care and money can give her.’

But once again Anna began to protest. ‘What’s the good of it all for a girl?’ she argued. ‘Did you love me any less because I couldn’t do mathematics? Do you love me less now because I count on my fingers?’

He kissed her. ‘That’s different, you’re you,’ he said, smiling, but a look that she knew well had come into his eyes, a cold, resolute expression, which meant that all persuasion was likely to be unavailing.

Presently they went upstairs to the nursery, and Sir Philip shaded the candle with his hand, while they stood together gazing down at Stephen—the child was heavily asleep.

‘Look, Philip,’ whispered Anna, pitiful and shaken, ‘look, Philip—she’s got two big tears on her cheek!’

He nodded, slipping his arm around Anna: ‘Come away, he muttered, ‘we may wake her.’