Читать книгу Heirs Apparent - Philip Gibbs - Страница 10

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When Julian went up to bed that night with a novel by Galsworthy under his arm his mother stood by his bedroom door and said in a smiling but rather aggressive way, “I want to speak to you, my lad!”

“What’s the trouble, mother o’ mine?” asked Julian.

He noticed that she looked in what he used to call a “spanking” mood when as a small boy she administered punishment regretfully but firmly. He thought also how jolly she looked in her evening gown of white velvet with a sprig of diamonds in her hair which did not show a thread of grey unless one looked very carefully. He knew the faint colour in her cheeks was not natural but due to a touch of papier poudré, but he thought no worse of her for that. She had an elegance which did not belong to many mothers of the men he knew. Impossible to believe that she had once cooked his father’s meals in a little Brixton villa, and dressed on twenty pounds a year, as often she reminded Janet! ... It was funny that Janet’s hair should be straw-coloured when his mother’s was as dark as Audrey Nye’s.

“You’re looking fine to-night,” he said, with admiration in his eyes.

She went into his room and closed the door, and stood looking at him with smiling but reproachful eyes.

“You needn’t try to flatter me into a good temper, sonny. I’m going to have it out with you—straight!”

“What on earth do you mean, mother?”

He was startled by her touch of temper.

“Surely you’re not fussing because I’ve come down from Oxford?”

“No,” she said, “not that, though I’m ashamed of you for being so foolish, and worrying poor old Dad. I mean something worse than that, Julian. Past the limit, in my opinion.”

Julian cast about in his mind for some grievous crime he might have committed. Debts? Well, he owed a bit in Oxford, but not enough to alarm his mother. She was a bit of a spender too. And anyhow how did she know? Getting drunk one night at the Oxford Carlton? No, she couldn’t have heard of that, and after all it might happen once in a life time to the most self-respecting man.

“Haven’t an idea!” he said. “What’s your worry, mother?”

“If you don’t know, you ought to. That’s all. I was at the Iffields’ this afternoon. The Major told me he had met you at Henley. He said there was a girl with you—Audrey Nye. You were staying the night together at the White Hart.”

“It’s just like that rasper to go prattling,” said Julian scornfully. “I suspected him of being rather a blighter, in spite of his D.S.O. in the dear old war. But what’s the matter, anyway?”

Mrs. Perryam raised her brown eyebrows.

“You don’t think it matters? Well, I jolly well do, my lad! I wasn’t brought up on the Old Testament like Grandpa, but I do believe in keeping straight. And I’ve always taught you to be clean and decent. I thought I could trust you, young man.”

“Good Heavens!” said Julian. “Why all this tragic talk because I walk from Oxford to Henley with a very nice kid? What’s come over you, mother? I didn’t think you were one of that sort.”

“Nor am I,” said Mrs. Perryam. “If you mean one of the old cats always interfering with young people, and spoiling their fun. I’ve given Janet plenty of rope, and you too, Julian, God knows! But I draw the line at this kind of thing.”

“What kind of thing?”

“The thing I’m talking about. You and that girl. The creature!”

“For Heaven’s sake,” said Julian with desperation, “what is this absurd idea at the back of your head, mother?”

She became angry with him suddenly.

“Don’t be impudent, Julian. I won’t stand it. You admit going about with that girl. Major Iffield saw you go upstairs together. He let the cat out of the bag.”

“I’ll break that man’s head,” said Julian fiercely.

“And you don’t even trouble to hide the giddy scandal of it!” said Mrs. Perryam. “It will be all about the countryside before the week’s out. A nice thing! What can the servants think of you when they find your pyjamas wrapped up with a girl’s night things, and hair brushes and handkerchiefs, and I don’t know what?”

Julian laughed loudly, his voice rising to a shrill note of mirth in which there was a hint of anger.

“Well, I’m blessed! That’s the way scandal is made. The most innocent affair twisted into something abominable. Lives wrecked because of suspicious, creepy-crawly minds. What mid-Victorian ideas you must have, mother! As if a fellow couldn’t go out for a walk with a well-brought-up girl, without any nonsense about it. Mother, I’m ashamed of you! I thought you were broader minded. Especially seeing the free and easy way in which you let Janet go on!”

Mrs. Perryam looked relieved, and a little ashamed of herself. “Oh, well—if you say there’s nothing in it!”

“I do,” said Julian.

“But, look here, sonny! Surely you’re old enough to understand—”

“No,” he said passionately. “And I hope I never shall be old enough to understand the miserable, morbid, unhealthy code under which the last generation seems to have been brought up. We’ve got beyond all that sort of nonsense. Men and girls of to-day aren’t always worrying about what people think and fussing over the sex question. For Heaven’s sake give us credit for a little decency and self-respect.”

“But Julian, old dear, that girl’s things—why were they wrapped up with yours? You can’t tell me that is quite decent.”

“I do tell you,” said Julian.

His mother was silent, with a little smile about her lips.

“I can’t understand you young people,” she said presently. “Perhaps you’re different. Janet says you are different, all of you. And yet human nature doesn’t change. It’s difficult to speak frankly on these things, but when I was a girl—not such ages ago either—”

Julian laughed again, and put his arm round his mother.

“That’s the trouble with you,” he said. “You don’t understand that human nature has changed, or at least its ideas. You’re all suffering from inhibitions, suppressed thoughts, all kinds of horrors due to Queen Victoria and the literature of her appalling period. We’re free of all that. We’re natural again. We do what we like without worrying about Mother Grundy. Because we’re not afraid of things no harm is done. See?”

“It’s jolly dangerous,” said Mrs. Perryam. “One reads frightful things about young people in the papers. Besides I’m not so old as all that. I know things in my own nature—”

She gave a sidelong glance at her son and blushed a little. Then she added something hurriedly.

“Janet scares the wits out of me sometimes. She laughs at everything I tell her.”

“Oh, Janet knows how to look after herself,” said Julian carelessly. “And if she doesn’t, I’ll take care to open her eyes. Trust me.”

“You two!” said Mrs. Perryam with a comical laugh. “Your father and I are just slaves to you. Well, it’s no use fussing, I suppose.”

“Not a bit,” said Julian.

She put her arms about him and kissed his forehead.

“As long as you don’t make a mess of things, sonny! You know I love every hair of your head. Only I wish you wouldn’t use so much brilliantine!”

She gave him a little pat on the cheek and slipped out of the room.

Julian went to his window and leaned out with his elbows on the ledge and his face in his hands, staring into the garden with its dark trees touched by a faint moonlight, and its stone terrace gleaming white beyond the shadow of the house.

“Literature!” he said. “But what about Life?”