Part 18

To Mrs. Home this was all glad news of a secret kind. She had seen so little of Philip lately, and to her mother's heart it was a warming thing to know that he was to spend the last Sunday of his bachelor life with her, and with nobody else. To say that she had been hurt at his wishing the family into which he was to marry being present on these last days before he definitely left his mother to cleave to his wife would be grossly misinterpreting her feeling; only she was herself glad that she would have him alone just once more. For the two had been not only mother and son, but the most intimate of friends; none had held so close a place to him, and now that Mrs. Home felt, rightly enough, that henceforward she must inevitably stand second in his confidence, she was, selfishly she was afraid but quite indubitably, delighted to know that they were to have one more little time quite alone. All that was to be said between them had already been said, she had for herself no last words, and felt sure that Philip had not either, and she rehearsed in her mind the quiet, ordinary little occupations that should make the days pass so pleasantly, as they had always passed when they two were alone together. Philip would get down by tea-time on Saturday, and was sure to spend a couple of hours in the garden or on the river. Then would follow dinner out on the terrace if this heat continued, and after dinner she would probably play Patience, while Philip watched her as he smoked from a chair beside her observing with vigilant eye any attempt to cheat on her part. Mrs. Home's appetite for cards was indeed somewhat minute, and if after twenty minutes or so Miss Milligan, unlike a growing girl, showed no signs of "coming out," she would, it must be confessed, enable her to do so by means not strictly legitimate. Sometimes one such evasion on her part would pass unnoticed by Philip, which encouraged her, if the laws of chance or her own want of skill still opposed the desired consummation, to cheat again. But this second attempt was scarcely ever successful, she was almost always found out, and Philip demanded a truthful statement as to whether a similar lamentable indiscretion had occurred before. When they were alone, too, Philip always read prayers in the evening, some short piece of the Bible, followed by a few collects. This little ceremony somehow was more intimately woven in with Mrs. Home's conception of "Philip" than anything else. It must be feared, indeed, that the dear little old lady did not pay very much attention either to the chapter he read or the prayers he said, but "Philip reading Prayers" was a very precious and a very integral part of her life. His strong, deep voice, his strong, handsome face vividly illuminated by the lamp he would put close to him, the row of silent servants, the general sense of good and comforting words, if comfort was needed, words, anyhow, that were charged with protection and love, all these things were a very real part of that biggest thing in her life, namely, that she was his mother, and he her son. Her son, bone of her bone, and born of her body, and how dear even he did not guess.

Sunday took up the tale that was so sweet to her. He would be late for breakfast, as he always was, and very likely she would have finished before he came down. But she never missed hearing his foot on the polished boards of the hall, and if he was very late she would have rung for a fresh teapot before he entered the room, since she had a horror, only equalled by her horror of snakes, of tea that had stood long. Often he was so late that his breakfast really had to be curtailed if they were to get to church before the service began, for they always walked there, and her mind was sometimes painfully divided as to whether it would not be better to be late rather than that he should have an insufficient breakfast. She had heard great things of Plasmon, and a year ago had secretly bought a small tin of that highly nutritious though perhaps slightly insipid powder, of which she meant to urge a tablespoonful on Philip if he seemed to her not to have had enough to eat before he started for church, since apparently this would be the equivalent of several mutton chops. But the tin had remained unopened, and only a few weeks ago she had thrown it away, having read some case of tinned-food poisoning in the papers. How dreadful if she meant to give him the equivalent of several mutton chops, and had succeeded only in supplying him with a fatal dose of ptomaine!

Then after the walk back through the pleasant fields there would be lunch, and after lunch in this July heat, long lounging in some sheltered spot in the garden. Tea followed, and after tea Philip's invariable refusal to go to church again, and her own invariable yielding to his wish that she should not go either. That again was an old-established affair, uninteresting and unessential no doubt to those who drive four-in-hand through life, but to this quiet old lady, whose nature had grown so fine through long years of speckless life, a part of herself. He would urge the most absurd reasons; she would be going alone, and would probably be waylaid and robbed for the sake of her red-and-gold Church-service; it threatened rain, and she would catch the most dreadful rheumatism; or life was uncertain at the best, and this might easily be the last Sunday that he would spend here, and how when she had buried him about Wednesday would she like the thought that she had refused his ultimate request? This last appeal was generally successful, and it was left for Mrs. Home to explain to their vicar, who always dined with them on Sunday, her unusual absence. This she did very badly, and Philip never helped her out. It was a point of honour that she should not say that it was he who had induced her to stay away, and his grave face watching her from the other side of the table as she invented the most futile of excuses, seemed to her to add insult to the injury he had already done her in obliging her to invent what would not have deceived a sucking child.

Then on Monday morning he would generally have to leave for town very early, but if this was the case, he always came to her room to wish her good-bye. And her good-bye to him meant what it said. "God be with you, my dear," was it, and she added always, "Come again as soon as you can."

All these things, the memory of those days and hours which were so inexpressibly dear to her, moved gently and evenly in Mrs. Home's mind, even as the shadows drew steadily and slowly across the grass as she walked up and down awaiting his arrival. And if sadness was there at all, it was only the wonderful and beautiful sadness that pervaded the evening hour itself, the hour when shadows lengthen, and the coolness of the sunset tells us that the day, the serene and sunlit day, is drawing to a close. That the day should end was inevitable; the preciousness of sunlit hours was valued because night would follow them, for had they been known to be everlasting, the joy of plucking their sweetness would have vanished. And the same shadowed thought was present in Mrs. Home's mind as she thought how the evening of her particular relationship to Philip was come; all these memories, though dear they would always be, gathered a greater fragrance because in the nature of things they must be temporary and transitory, even as the memory of childish days is dear simply because one is a child no longer. While childhood remained they were uncoloured by romance, the romance the halo of them only begins to glow when it is known that they are soon to be at an end.

Yet Mrs. Home would not have had anything different; that her relation to Philip must fade as the day-star in the light of dawn, she had always known. Even when the day-star was very bright and the dawn not yet hinted in Eastern skies, she knew that, and now when the whole East was suffused with the rosy glow, she would not have delayed the upleap of the resplendent sun by an hour or a minute. For old-age unembittered was her's, and in the completeness and fulness of Philip's manhood, not in keeping him undeveloped and unstung by the sunlight, though through it was flung bitter foam of the sea that breaks forever round this life of man, she realised not herself only but him most fully and best. She would not retain him, even if she could; he had got to live his life, and make it as round and perfect as it could be made. It was her part only to watch from the shore as he put out into the breakers, and wish him God-speed. Yet now, as far as she could forecast, no breakers were there, a calm sunny ocean awaited him; there was but the tide which would bear him smoothly out. How far he would go, whether out of sight of the land, where she strained dim eyes after him, or whether, so to speak, he should anchor close to her, she did not know. He had now to put out; once more they--he and she alone--would play together on the sands, but each would know--he very much more than she, that they played together for the last time. After this he must, as he ought, take another for his playmate. And if at the thought her kind blue eyes were a little dim, it was the flesh only that was weak. With all her soul she bade him push out, and if to herself she said: "Oh, Philip! must you go?" all in herself that she wished to be reckoned by, all that was truly herself, said "God-speed" to him.

The gardeners at Pangbourne Court had been startled into dreadful activity that day. "The master," it was known, would be down for this Sunday, but "the master" by himself was a much more formidable affair than he with a party. As Philip had conjectured at Whitsuntide, there would come a break in the happy life of the garden, and it was quite indubitably here now. The hot and early summer which had produced so glorious an array of blossom in that June week now exacted payment for that; roses which should have flowered into August had exhausted themselves, the blooms of summer were really over, while the autumn plants were still immature. All this was really not the fault of the gardeners, but of the weather; but, as has been said, they were stirred into immense activity by the prospect of Philip's arrival, since if the beds presented a fair show, he would be more likely to be lenient to other deficiencies. But Mrs. Home, as she went up and down the paths waiting for his arrival, saw but too clearly that things were not quite as they should be. A dryness, an arrest of growth, seemed to have laid hands on the beds; it was as if some catastrophe had stricken the vegetable kingdoms that withered and blighted them. The grass of the lawn, too, lacked the vividness of the velvet that so delighted Philip's London-wearied eye--there were patches of brown and withered green everywhere, instead of the "excellent emerald." Yet, perhaps, surely almost, he would not vex himself with that. Three days only intervened between now and the twenty-eighth; he would have no fault to find with anything in the sunlight of life which so streamed on him.

She was passing between two old hedges of yew, compact and thick of growth as a brick wall, and impervious to the vision. Her own path lay over the grass, but on either far side of these hedges was a gravel walk, and half-way up this she heard a footstep sounding crisply. For one moment she thought it was Philip's, and nearly called to him, the next she smiled at herself for having thought so, for it altogether lacked the brisk decision with which he walked, and she made sure it was one of the gardeners. It went parallel with her, however, in the same direction, and when she got to the end of her own yew-girt avenue, she met the owner of the footstep in the little sunk Alpine garden, which was Philip's especial delight. It was he. She had not recognised the footstep, and though when they met, her eyes told her that this certainly was her son, it was someone so different from him whom she knew that she scarcely recognised him.

Misery sat in his face, misery and a hardness as of iron. He often looked stern, often looked tired, but now it seemed as if it was of life that he was tired, and his whole face was inflexible and inexorable. It was not the sort of misery that could break down and sob itself into acquiescence, it was the misery of the soul into which the iron has entered. And mother and son looked at each other long without speaking, he with that face and soul of iron, she with a hundred terrors winnowing her. He had not given her any greeting, nor she him. Then she clasped her hands together in speechless entreaty, and held them out to him. But still he said nothing, and it was she who spoke first.

"Philip, what is it?" she said. "Whatever it is, tell me quickly, my dear. I can bear to know anything. I cannot bear not to."

He looked away from her for a moment, striking the gravel with his stick.

"Madge?" said Mrs. Home. "Is she dead?"

Yet even as she spoke she knew it was not that. That, even that, would not have made Philip like this. He would have come to her to be comforted; it was not comfort that he asked for.

"No, she is not dead," he said. "I wish she was. She has betrayed me and thrown me over. She is probably by this time married to Evelyn Dundas!"

He paused a moment.

"That is what has happened," he said; "and, here to you and now, mother, I curse them both. I met them together yesterday, I cursed them to their faces. There is nothing I will not do that can damage them in any way. I will ruin him if I can, and I will wait long for my vengeance if need be. I tried to forgive them, I tried to go to the house and tell them so, but I could not. I don't forgive them, and if for that reason God does not forgive me what I have done amiss, I don't care. I would forgive them if I could; I can't. If that is wrong I can't help it. It is better you should know this at once. I am sorry if it hurts you, but there is no manner of use in my trying to 'break it' to you, as they call it. Break it! It is I who am broken!"

Then all the tenderness of maternity, all the years of love between her and Philip, the complete confidence which had forged so strong and golden a chain between them, rose in Mrs. Home's mind and sent to her lips the only answer she could make. Sorrow for him, sympathy with him, of course he took for granted; there was no need to speak of things like these.

"Ah, dear Philip, unsay that, unsay that!" she cried. "Whatever happens to one, it is impossible that you should feel that!"

He looked at her with the same glooming face.

"I don't unsay it," he said, "I don't unsay one single word of it. In proportion as both of them were dear to me, so is that which has happened detestable to me. I don't want to talk about it--there is no use in that. I have got to begin my life again; that is what it comes to, and I have to begin it on a basis of hate and utter distrust. Two people who were the friends of my heart, people whom I could have trusted, so I should have thought, to the uttermost verge of eternity, have done this."

Then all his bitterness, and there was much of that, all his resentment and anger, all his love gone sour, rose in his throat.

"For what guarantee have I now," he cried, "that everyone else whom I trusted will not behave to me like that? You, mother, you, what plans and plots may you not have got against me? It is all very well to say that you cannot, that you are my friend. But what is my experience of friends? They are those who know one best, and can thus stab most deeply. God defend me from my friends--I would sooner shake hands with my enemies. Ah! I forgive them, for I might know that they were enemies; but, fool that I was, I never guessed that my friends were but enemies who sat at my table. They ate my food--I wish it had choked them; they drank my wine again and again--I wish I had poisoned it. For they have poisoned me, they have made my life impossible. Ah, don't say I shall get over it! That is silly. How can I get over it? For if I could, I should not say these things to you. I should be silent, I hope, and trust to what is called the healing hand of Time. But there are certain things Time never heals. One of them is the infidelity of those whom one thought were friends."

He was speaking quickly now, the bile of bitterness overflowed.

"Friends!" he said. "Madge and Evelyn and I were friends. But they two have done this accursed thing. And if I have another friend in this world, I shall now expect him to believe the chance word of any lying tongue. Apart from you, I have one friend left, and if Tom Merivale told me to-morrow that I had cheated at cards, and that in consequence he declined the pleasure of my further acquaintance, I should not be surprised. I believe nothing good of my friends, and I believe less harm of my enemies! They, anyhow, can hurt me less. I have had but four friends in my life, and yet even with four, fool that I was, I counted myself rich in them. Two have gone, and there are just two people in this world whom I hate. Till yesterday there were none."

Mrs. Home laid her hand timidly on his arm.

"Philip, dear Philip," she said, "is there any good in saying these things? Does it help in any way what has happened, or does it help you?"

"No, it does no good," said he. "I don't want to do any good. I just choose to say what I am saying, and what I say, I assure you, is no exaggeration of what I feel--it does not even do justice to what I feel. One thing I have misstated, or it was but a mood of the moment. I said I was broken; I am nothing of the sort. I never did a better day's work than to-day. But I don't want to say these things again, and I have no intention of doing so. I beg you also never to refer to them. But I choose just this once to say what my feeling towards them is. I tried, indeed I tried my best, to forgive them, but I can't. I can no more now conceive forgiving them than a blind man can conceive the colour of that rose. I loved them both, and in proportion as my love for them was strong, so is my hate for them."

He paused a moment.

"That is all," he said. "I wanted you to know that, and to be under no misconception as to what I felt. Let us never talk of either of them again. I have already given all necessary orders in London, and all I have to do here is to send back all wedding presents. I will do that to-night."

He looked at her a moment as she stood there with hands that trembled and eyes that were dim, pitying him to the bottom of her kind, loving soul, but imploring him, so he felt, not to be like this. And the pity reached and touched him, though the entreaty did not.

"Poor mother," he said. "I am sorry for you, indeed I am that. We have not kissed yet, or shaken hands."

But Mrs. Home, gentle and loving and pitiful as she was, could not do quite as he asked, though her hands and her lips yearned for him.

"No, Philip," she said; "but with whom do I shake hands, and whom do I kiss? You, the Philip who is my son, or the man who has said this? Indeed, dear, I know you well, and it is not you who have spoken."

He looked at her steadily.

"Yes, it is I who have spoken," he said. "This is now your son, the man who has said these things. Do you cast me off, too?"

Unfair, unjust as the words were, she felt no pang of resentment with him, telling herself that he was not himself. And, whatever he was, her relationship to him, she knew, could never be altered. If he was lying in the condemned cell for some brutal murder, whatever he had done or been could never make any difference to that. He knew that, too, his best self knew it, and it was to his best self she spoke.

"You know I can never cast you off," she said, "and those were wild words but they are unsaid. Here is my hand, my darling, and here are my lips. You want me also never to say any more about it. I will not; but I must say this about you--that you will not always feel like this. I know you will not. And when the change comes, tell me. You cannot take that belief away from me."

He kissed her, holding both her hands in his, but his face did not relax.

"Poor mother!" he said again.