Adrian Glynde (8 page)

Adrian settled himself against the cushions. “When I saw someone in the car, I thought it was her,” he said.

“Naturally. And, to your disappointment, you found me.”

Adrian glanced at her shyly. “No, I wasn't disappointed,” he said, and was surprised, as her eyes met his, to see them for a moment swim with tears.

The car swerved into the entrance gate, and soon Adrian was taking off his coat in the hall, so hungry that he could hardly endure the prospect of having to wash his hands and wait with Uncle Bob till Aunt Clara came down. At last she came, and he followed her and his Uncle into the dining-room, his nose alert, like a young fox-terrier's, for the first delicious savour.

“Hungry, eh?” asked Uncle Bob, looking up from his carving of a chicken.

“Frightfully,” he replied, and as the plate was placed before him he realised that the holidays had really begun.

After lunch, he went out, as usual, to inspect. He was disappointed to find that Rhoda's pups were already quite large, independent creatures: he had forgotten that pups grew so quickly. But they were nice, amusing
beasts and he took them out to play with their mother on the lawn. But as time passed, he glanced more and more frequently at the drive, expecting every moment to see his mother returning from the luncheon party. He pictured her as he had last seen her, small, pretty, neat, with mischievous pale blue eyes, waving golden hair, and lively ways. Then he recalled her in one of her moods, when she became very quiet and her eyes turned very hard and she spoke in a voice that was little more than a hoarse whisper. When she became more angry still, she used to shriek and sob in a way that ashamed and alarmed him. But she would not, he believed, indulge in her tempers here. As he glanced again towards the gate, he imagined her appearing there and coming down the drive in that fairylike evening dress she had worn, years ago, when she and his father were going out to dinner. He did not seriously believe that she would appear now in that dress, but his imagination stubbornly presented her to him in it. It was the only guise in which he could picture her now.

After playing with the pups for a long time he took them back to their kennel and entered the house by a side door. Emerging into the front hall, he was surprised to find a strange lady seated at the writing-table near the fireplace with a pen in her hand. She did not seem to notice his arrival, but sat gazing fixedly across the room as if considering what she should say in the letter she was writing. She had a thin face with high cheekbones and a pointed chin. Her lips were very red and her golden eyebrows very narrow: her pale golden hair was cut in a straight fringe along her forehead and curled into little plaited buns over her ears. All this, and the absent stare of her pale blue eyes, made her look to Adrian like a large, expensive doll. Suddenly her gaze moved, she caught sight of him standing awkwardly
there, and with a sudden sinking of the heart Adrian realised she was his mother.

“Well,” she said, in a hard, precise voice which he did not recognise, “if that isn't my own child staring at me as if I were a ghost. Why, don't you know your own Mummy, Adrian? Come here, my lamb, and give me a kiss.”

Adrian approached obediently. This lady was so utterly unlike his mother as he remembered her that he was much more afraid of her than if she had been a stranger. There was something terrible for the boy in this immense change in her. She put an arm round him and her lips touched his cheek. She exhaled the faint fragrance of an exotic flower. “Wherever have you been, Adrian?” she asked.” I expected to find you looking out for me. Instead of which …” She made a gesture indicating vacancy. “No Adrian! Not a sign!”

“I was in the garden,” he replied, “playing with Rhoda's pups.”

“Playing with pups! While your poor Mummy whom you haven't seen for … what is it? four, five, six years, has been waiting and waiting. Well, what a big boy you've grown. Let me look at you.” She put a finger under his chin and tilted his face up.

Adrian lowered his eyes, shyly avoiding her keen gaze. “What, shy with your own mother?” She gave him a little pat on the shoulder. “Well, run away and let me finish my letter before tea.”

Adrian, glad of the release, turned away, and, seeing the drawing-room door open, went in. The tea-table with its white cloth was already in place, but there were still no other signs of tea. He took a book from a table as he passed and settled himself in a corner of the sofa with the open book in his hands. But though his eyes were fixed on the page, he was not even trying to read. His
gaze was fixed on an inner vision of the strange, unlovable lady he had so unexpectedly discovered in the hall. His heart could not accept the fact that she was his mother, though a few unmistakable resemblances to his mother—her way of opening her eyes wide in an innocent stare; the curve of her temples; her way of talking, though not her voice—assured him that it was she. He longed to escape, to leave Yarn and go at once to his grandfather's at Abbot's Randale, for he felt he would never get to know this utter stranger whose moments of likeness to the mother in his mind produced on him the impression of a painful caricature. It was almost impossible to realise that the mother he remembered no longer existed, that she was not still in India and might not yet return to visit him. A chill void opened, like a wound, in his heart. He longed to roll on the sofa and let himself weep, weep on quietly until his heart was eased of its burden of emptiness. After that, it seemed, he would feel better, and the presence in the house of the strange visitor would be little worse than that of any other stranger.

As he was occupied with these thoughts and feelings, he was roused by the arrival of the waiting-maid with the tea-tray, and, immediately after her, Aunt Clara.

“Hallo, Adrian!” she said. “Have you seen your mother?”

“Yes,” he said in a voice which told her nothing and so told her all. Then, feeling somehow called upon to say something else, he added: “She's busy at present, writing a letter.”

Clara sat down beside him, and in a pleasant, friendly way which warmed his heart, took his hand in hers. Then her eyes fell on the book on his knee. “
Einstein and the Universe
, by Charles Nordmann! Well, upon my word!” she said.

He raised shy, guilty eyes to hers, and realising the situation she turned away her face.

The door opened and Minnie entered, followed by Bob.

“It's
sure
to catch the post?” she was saying.

“Quite!” answered Bob. “Rayner always goes with the letters, and Rayner's as good as the clock at Greenwich.”

“Because,” Minnie explained, “its
very
important.”

Clara inspected the performing doll with her slightly sarcastic smile. “Well, Minnie, and don't you see an enormous change in Adrian?”

“Enormous,” said Minnie, casting a cold, bright smile at her son. “He's quite the young man.”

“And what of the luncheon? Was it worth your sacrifice?”

“My sacrifice?” The pale blue eyes opened wide.

“Of the drive to the station, my dear.”

“Clara, what a way you have of putting things.”

“Your way, not mine, my dear Minnie. You're too modest. Didn't you say to me, when accepting the invitation, that there are times when one does not do what one most wishes to do? I thought that very beautiful: quite biblical. Abraham, no doubt, addressed himself in those very words when thumbing the edge of the carving-knife.”

Minnie threw up her small white hands. “Oh, if you drag in Scripture, I'm lost.” Then she returned to the charge. “It's all very well for you to poke fun at me, Clara: you judge everything by your simple life here. But if you and Bob had ever lived in India you would realise that social duties are a serious matter.”

“My dear Minnie, why should I trouble to go to India when I can so conveniently learn from you, here in our modest little English village? Are you ready for another cup of tea?”

Minnie passed her cup, and Clara, with her slightly
raised eyebrows and slightly upturned smile, took the cup and, lifting the teapot, poured into it a slim, perfectly aimed arc of tea. “Sugar? I always forget.”

Minnie shuddered. “Heavens, no!”

Clara returned the cup. “Now, tell me; who was there?”

Minnie responded with gusto. It was a theme which interested her.” Well, the Mannings, a Mr. and Mrs. Huxtable, and, of
all
people, Sir George and Lady Matfen.”

Clara shook her head. “I don't know them.”

Minnie pursed her lips. “Sir George was Governor of Gibraltar,” she said. “I met them sixteen years ago in Ireland when Papa was stationed there, you know. When I told Sir George that I was Major Emmet's daughter, he actually remembered me perfectly. He said I hadn't changed in the least.”

Clara glanced at her visitor with genuine concern. There was not the smallest glint of malice discernible in her eye. “But, my dear Minnie, how distressing. He might at least have refrained from saying so.”

Minnie knitted her brows. “Distressing, you think?”

“Yes! One might have hoped that after sixteen years … However!”

Minnie smiled a girlish smile and tossed her head. “I haven't an idea what you're getting at, Clara. I only know it's something horrid.” She shot a spritely glance at Adrian. “Your auntie loves to tease your poor mother, Adrian.” She transferred the glance to Bob. “Bob. I'm afraid your wife's not improved. Still a fearful cynic.”

Clara smiled modestly. “Not a cynic, dear Minnie; merely a realist.”

“Or perhaps simply jealous. You're surely not going to pretend that if the remark had been made to you, you wouldn't have been … well, a little pleased?”

Clara shook her head. “Flattery, Minnie, has to be plausable before I can digest it.”

Minnie considered the reply for a moment with an arch frown, and then, with a smile, lightly dismissed it unexplored. Her own question to Clara had tickled her, because, obviously, no one
could
have made such a remark to poor Clara. “I liked the Huxtables,” she said, “at least I liked him. Her I thought a trifle … well, stupid: we hadn't much to say to each other. But he and I hit it off at once.”

Clara glanced at her reproachfully. “Not another victim, I trust, Minnie? It's too cruel to turn an elephant-gun on to our local rabbits. Aren't you content with your Indian triumphs?”

Bob, who as usual on these occasions had sat silent, glancing with a dry smile from one to other of the two women, burst into a loud laugh and rose to his feet. “I'm going to feed the pups, Adrian,” he remarked as he went towards the door.

Adrian at once jumped up and followed him.

Minnie, with eyebrows raised in surprise, watched them go. “Pups again!” she remarked as the door closed. “Funny child! He was amusing himself with the pups, it appears, instead of looking out for me, when I came back this afternoon; and now it's pups again. He seems to be more interested in pups than in his mother.”

Clara smiled grimly. “But of course he is, my dear Minnie. A sleeping partner has no right to be offended if, when he calls at the office after an absence of six years, the staff doesn't recognise him. Did you flatter yourself that absence would make the heart grow fonder?”

“As his mother, I flattered myself, I must say, that I should have a rather warmer welcome.”

“And, as your son, no doubt Adrian did the same. If you see no reason to reproach yourself with your luncheon-party, I don't see what right you have to reproach him with his pups. It's tit for tat, that's all.”

Minnie threw up her head and pursed her lips. “Don't be absurd, Clara,” she said with dignity. “The two cases are entirely different. One doesn't treat children as grown-up people. At least, if you do, I don't. And I must say, I am disappointed in the boy's behaviour. I'm sure I don't know why you should think it necessary to take his side.”

“Mere habit, I suppose,” said Clara drily. “A habit of six years standing.”

Minnie's pupils narrowed. “You speak as if I had deserted the child,” she remarked with dignified protest.

Clara inspected the pale blue eyes critically, then shrugged her shoulders. “What would you prefer to have it called, Minnie? I'm all in favour of accurate definition.”

Minnie was beating time on the floor with one foot. She was getting angry. “Are you ever serious, Clara, I wonder? Your incessant wittiness, you know, sometimes gets on my nerves.”

Clara laughed. “Then why stay and listen to it. The world lies before you. There's no one in the library and you know your way to your room. Or there is London, or India, where social obligations are such very serious matters. But you misunderstand me if you think I am being frivolous. I was never more serious in my life. What I am trying to make you realise is that you are almost a complete stranger to Adrian. He hasn't seen you for nearly half his lifetime. Children, by the very simplicity of their natures, are terribly just: they pay back just so much as they receive. It is useless for you to expect from Adrian more than you have given.”

“I shall expect him to treat me as his mother,” answered Minnie conclusively.

“Then I'm afraid,” said Clara, “that you will be disappointed.” She rose from her chair. “You and I, Minnie,” she said with a smile, “understand each other remarkably well, I believe. I never mince matters with you, even when I am being what you so flatteringly call
witty
; and I will do you the justice to admit that you generally take what I say in very good part. It would be hypocrisy in me to pretend, and in you to claim, that you have been a good mother to Adrian, and all I am trying to do is to persuade you not to demand much of him at present. If you can win his affection during the next week or two, it will be time enough then to speak of his duty to you as a son. Will you come and pay a visit to your rivals?”