Читать книгу Kitty - Warwick Deeping - Страница 39

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It was the letter of her son’s to his young wife that had made Clara St. George ruthlessly conscious of herself as a very much wronged woman.

Her ruthlessness was the trouble. Kitty, in giving her that letter to read, had given her her woman’s opportunity, a humiliating and difficult opportunity no doubt, but to humble herself and to ask herself questions was not Clara St. George’s way. She accepted the insult. That little, dumpty, honey-headed thing had not only stolen her son, but she had gone out of her way to prove how thoroughly she had stolen him.

That letter! All—“Kitty—Kitty”, and protecting arms and sentimental rhetoric—, and not a word about his mother in it. The ingratitude of men, their crass sex blindness!

She walked. She walked at a great pace, gliding along like the bust of a pale and outraged Juno carried in a state festival. She found herself in Hyde Park. It was a beautiful spring day, but she felt like winter, ruthless, hurrying to shrivel all succulent green growth. She sat down for a while by the Serpentine, and hated every live thing that moved in the sunshine, the ducks, the children, the impudent and assertive sparrows. Those Greenwood people were like London sparrows.

For undoubtedly she had lost her son, and she raged over it. She did not ask herself why she had lost him, and had she asked herself that question her answer would have been prejudiced and wilful. Alex was like his father. All these years she had laboured to efface the father in the son, to impose the mother on him, and in one short week he had recapitulated all those irresponsible characteristics. He had come home drunk, he had got himself into a legalized mess with a girl, and he was writing her cowardly, emotional letters. Fear! A St. George afraid, and saying so—to the daughter of a woman who kept a shop! Crying—“Kitty—Kitty”—when he should have been crying—“Mother.”

Ah,—there was the wound, but she would not let it bleed. Not she! She covered it with clean linen and ice. She set her teeth. She would fight for her son and get him back; and how she did it she did not care. To have to humiliate herself by competing with a girl like that, a little common thing, a little bit of buttered egg on toast! Abominable! But was not this consciousness of outrage in her favour? It absolved her from all compunction. She could treat these Greenwoods as they deserved to be treated, meet adroitness with subtlety, use the knife on the knots they had tied. She had every right to be ruthless, maternally ruthless.

She walked home. She let herself into No. 77. Cummins met her with a confiding face.

“There’s a letter, madam.”

It was lying on the hall table. She picked it up, and passing by Cummins like a north wind, she went upstairs to the drawing-room and read that letter.

It made her feel worse. He wrote about Kitty. “For my sake, mater dear, I know you will like her. She’s so understanding and plucky—.”

It was as though he had dashed icy water over her bosom. She caught her breath. She reached for the telephone on her desk, and rang up the exchange.

“Put me on to No. 1999—Central.”

She waited.

“Hallo!”

“Hallo. Is that Mr Furnival’s? This is Mrs St. George speaking, Cardigan Square. Is Mr Furnival in? What? Gone out to lunch. I want to see him very particularly this afternoon. Busy? But he must see me. He can expect me at half-past two. Write it down. Mrs St. George will call at half-past two. Very well.”

She hung up the receiver.