Balefanio - tmp0

And when Eric had arrived at the Hall, excited with the pleasure of being home again and at the beautiful spring morning, Mrs. Beddoes had met him at the door, in silence, with only a wan smile. He was sent up to his mother in her room, as if to an invalid. He had come in, a little sobered, rather apprehensive, after knocking—utterly unprepared for the awful shock he was to receive. For a moment, he hardly recognised Lily. She was hideous with grief. Her eyes swollen into slits, her mouth heavy

and pouting, her face blotched and sallow. He hung back, scared. The smile shrank from his lips. She gave a kind of hoarse cry. He rushed into her arms. That was agony. He knew then that everything he'd imagined he'd suffered at school was nothing, mere selfishness, triviality. She reopened the wound and tore it ten times wider. And now it would have made no difference to Eric if ten fathers had been killed. It was only for her he felt. Father was dead. But she was alive and suffering like this under his very eyes. He could do absolutely nothing. The words he tried to say were one long stammer. As for what he'd written in those letters, he was wretched with shame at his glibness, his heartlessness. He stood beside her while she sobbed. Sud­denly she'd gasped out: "He loved us so much."

It was like a reproach, not for what he'd failed to feel for his father, but for all he might have been to her. He knelt beside her chair. An hour must have passed. It was time for lunch. He left her bathing her eyes with water from the bedroom jug.

This was the first and last scene of the kind they had had together. He guiltily shunned another. It would have been more than he could bear. When they were together they were gentle and sad, or sadly cheerful. Often Eric knew that she went up­stairs to be alone with her sufferings, and on these occasions he went out by himself and roamed guiltily about the woods, torn between the feeling that he ought to be with her and the feeling that he

couldn't bear to see her in that terrible condition. When he came into her room, sometimes, and found her crying over a diary or some old letters, he either stepped out quietly, or, if detected, pre­tended to notice nothing. Lily, on her side, never made any appeal for his sympathy, beyond show­ing, sometimes indirectly, sometimes frankly, that she wished to be alone.

Eric had been glad to get back to school at the end of that holiday. Even school was preferable to this haunted state, and the routine distracted his thoughts. The next holidays were not so bad. The load seemed eased a little. At times he fancied that she was brighter, but the relapses were more pain­ful by contrast. They had never had a secret from each other before this. Eric had never consciously kept any fact or sensation of importance relating to himself from his mother. But now their whole relationship changed, and was likely to remain changed.

Nothing, it seemed, could re-establish it. Eric began a secret grieving over his mother. He was grieving over her now — over her paleness and sadness as she sat in slim black beside Grandad and the carriage rattled down the village street. Some of the shops were open, others closed, ac­cording as to whether their proprietors had been up at the church. If only I could do something to help her, Eric thought.

But he couldn't. And, what was worse, he was

getting quite shy with her, afraid of blundering— of giving her pain or offence. All through the ser­vice he had glanced anxiously at her to be sure that she could stand it. He was quite prepared for her to faint or collapse. He would far rather have had no memorial service and no memorial and his father forgotten, if she could forget too, and be happier.

And yet, here he was thinking about going to tea at Aunt Mary's. He had another pang of guilt at his selfishness. It was curious that the thought of Aunt Mary often made him feel guilty towards his mother, apparently without any reason.

He was still mooning when the victoria stopped at the park gates, and Kent began to climb down from the box, very stiffly and with loud coughs.

Lily had to remind Eric:

"The gates, darling," tapping him on the knee.

So he jumped out and opened them, as he had done since he was eight years old and loved doing it, after Sunday morning services, just reaching up to the latch, rooting the bolts out of the ground with a great effort, and always glancing apprehen­sively up at the notice: Trespassers will be Prose­cuted. By Order. John Vernon. John Vernon would come slowly into focus again, as it were, as his grandfather—sitting mildly and blandly in the carriage

But some day, thought Eric, he will die. The idea did not greatly impress him. It seemed so remote. He could imagine his mother dying—it had been a nightmare of his for years. He saw her, so beautiful and young, struck down, killed by grief or quick consumption. That seemed sometimes horribly imminent. But Grandad never changed. Eric could barely remember him before his illness. He appeared to be immortal in senility. One would as soon expect a famous ruin, which trippers visit, to tumble down.

But when Grandad does die, mused Eric, pur­suing this unfamiliar train of thought, the Hall will belong to me. That, too, seemed meaningless. Once or twice Lily had alluded in some way to the future, prefacing the remark with "One day, if any­thing were to happen to Grandad ..." This sort of conversation made Eric ill at ease, and he cut it short with:

"Then you and I will live there together, won't we, Mums?"

"If you like, darling." Her smile was sweet. "If you want me to, then."

"Want you to?" He simply didn't understand. "Why on earth shouldn't I?"

"You might be thinking of getting married, you know."

"I shall never marry. I'd rather stay with you."

"Oh, but I should like you to marry. I should like to be a grandmother some day."

"Well, even if I did, it wouldn't make the slightest difference."

She had laughed. This had been one of her rare moments of gaiety; but he, who had been taking her more or less seriously, was faintly hurt.

By this time, Kent had touched his hat with his whip, said: "Thank you. Master Eric"—and Eric was back in the victoria again, having closed the! gates. They were crossing the park, and every feature of that miniature sloping landscape was known to him. There were the woods beyond and the chimneys of the Hall just showing in the hol­low. There were leaf shadows on the rutted drive. What should I do if all this belonged to me? Eric wondered. Perhaps I'd have the drive repaired. Should I change the name on the notice-board from John to Eric Vernon? But no, he didn't want to touch anything. He had grown up with a semi-superstitious fear, perhaps exaggerated from the teaching of his mother, of meddling with the Past. His mind switched back, as it always did, to her.

I'll stay with her always, he said to himself, and the thought made him feel curiously sad, so that tears rilled his eyes.

Taking a sudden decision, he leant forward and asked:

"Shall we g-g------?"

"Take a deep breath and count, darling," said Lily.

Eric took a deep breath and counted up to twenty.

"Shall we g-go out for a walk after lunch, Mums?"

She smiled, so sweetly and sadly,

"If you'd like to, darling," she gave a little sigh, "and Mummy's not too tired."

She looked as fragile as a leaf. Again Eric re­proached himself. She didn't want to, and it would tire her. But she'd probably come, all the same, just to please him. He ought never to have asked her to come. It was more of his lack of considera­tion. Of course, after that long service, she'd need a rest.

A voice spoke inside him:

If she doesn't come, you can go over to Aunt Mary's. He repressed it with an extraordinary sen­sation of guilt. In any case, he told himself, nothing would induce me to go to Aunt Mary's on a day like this. I oughtn't to. Out of respect for Father. Mother wouldn't like it. I ought to be by myself this afternoon and think about Father. It'd be dis­gusting to go to Aunt Mary's. She oughtn't to have asked me. But I expect she forgot, just for the moment. She'd probably think I was an absolute cad if I did go.