Читать книгу Kitty - Warwick Deeping - Страница 25
IV
ОглавлениеOn that last day there was a break in the ice of Mrs St. George’s stoicism.
Alex had gone off soon after breakfast. He had kissed her, and there had been a something in that kiss of his that had troubled her coldness, a secret warmth, a silent—and young—compassion. It was as though the youth in him had left her with the thought—“Poor mater, she’s so frozen up. She misses things.” For that is one of the puzzles of life, how much other people feel, and what they feel, and between Mrs St. George and her son a barrier had always existed. Sometimes as a child Alex had wondered about his mother. She had been so unplayful. Always he had been more ready to run to Cummins,—but not in his mother’s presence.
He had not told her where he was going, and he had not turned up at lunch, and his mother had noticed that a cover had not been laid for him.
“Did Mr Alex tell you he would be out?”
“Yes, madam.”
So, he had told Cummins! Was it that he had forgotten to tell his mother, or had he not troubled to tell her? It was very discourteous of him. And to leave her alone like this on his last day. She was coldly offended, wounded, perplexed. This secretiveness, this air of independent casualness was new in him, or she thought it new, and she was angered by it. That was her great misfortune. She was one of those congealed women who seem to mistrust all emotion, and to slam a door in the face of emotional expression, but emotion of some sort is inevitable. Suppressed in one direction, it will break out in another, and in Clara St. George’s case it took the form of anger. That was the one flame that seemed to colour her ice.
She allowed herself to be angry; anger was the one wine that she would drink, and this particular emotion had developed a devilish facility. She did not know the strength and the fierceness of the creature. For years she had had no cause for a live and primitive anger, and like a woman who has kept a tame leopard in her house, she played with the cat-like, couchant thing.
Her son’s last day! And what was he doing with it?
She felt that she had every right to be angry, and that anger was her misfortune, for anger was her wine, filling her with a feeling of flushed lightness. She kept tea waiting for half an hour, but no Alex appeared, and she sat down at her desk and attempted to write letters. She had a moment of suspicion. Could it be possible that there was a girl? But—then—what girl? On his previous leaves she had not known him particularly interested in any woman, and so sure was she of her controlling hands that even at the last hour she did not seriously suspect the existence of a woman. It was just thoughtlessness, or restlessness, or excitement. The war had made people so excitable.
So she waited. And her anger grew chilled. She waited for him as she sometimes had waited for his father—frigid, accusing, confident. It would never have entered her head that it was possible for a mother to be pitied by her son, or that Alex would ever come to pity her. Pity and pride may be incompatible. She associated pity with condescension, and that anyone might stoop to her was unthinkable.