Clara’s hand reached back to hers. “Do you, darling? But they are nice, after such a terrible winter, aren’t they?”
“I like the winter. I never mind the cold.”
“I know. But the cold is awful to me, even though I was brought up in Newfoundland…. Look here, Pauline.”
“Yes, Mummie.” She answered as a child, but her eyes dwelt, with a woman’s appraisal, on her mother’s blunt, healthy face, her hair cut without elegance, her chest on which there was a red triangle of sunburn. Pauline suspected the relations between Renny and her mother, and the suspicion poisoned her life. She loved Renny with her passionate girl’s soul, with a piercing, hopeless love. And soon she was to marry Wakefield. Sometimes she felt that she was wrong in marrying Wakefield, but she had a deep affection for him, and she could not waste her life in love for a man who cared nothing for her as a woman, only loved her as a little friend. She had told of her indecision in the confessional and the priest had advised her to turn her heart confidently to Wakefield. He was sure they would be happy together. She must put Renny out of her mind. Her love for him was a sin.
“I’ve been thinking,” said Clara.
“Yes?” Pauline was scarcely interested. Her mother would certainly be thinking about the tea shop, and they had talked and thought so much of it.
“I’ve been thinking,” went on Clara, “that I ought to go away.”
“Go away? But where? And why?” Pauline’s words were almost a cry. She could scarcely believe her ears. Her mother go away!
Clara went on quietly — “Well, since your uncle’s wife has died, he needs a housekeeper.”
“He doesn’t need you!” said Pauline passionately. “He’s never been kind to you. I don’t like Uncle Fred. Why, Mummie” — her voice broke — “you couldn’t go away? You couldn’t!”
“You and Wake would be better alone. Any young married pair are better alone.”
“We don’t want you to go. We don’t want to be alone.” But even as her lips framed the words, her voice faltered. She was not convincing. Clara experienced a cruel pang. Yet how natural that the boy and girl should want to be in the house alone!
But Pauline was not thinking of Wakefield. A glimmering brightness had risen in her mind. If her mother went away there would no longer be the torture of seeing her and Renny together, of seeing them go off together talking intimately about some trivial matter.
“I have quite made up my mind.” Clara was saying. “Of course, I shall often come to see you. And I’ll write two or three times a week.” She spoke in a stolid matter-of-fact tone.
Pauline looked down at her curiously. What was behind that blonde impassive face? Why had she come to this decision? Pauline suddenly wanted to throw herself on Clara’s breast and cry. The twilight of the spring evening, the strangeness of her approaching marriage, the thought of parting from her mother, gave her a lost, frightened feeling. But she spoke calmly.
“Of course, if you want to go, Mummie. But you know how I feel about it. Why, I’ve never been away from you a night in my life. It will be horrible.”
Clara laughed teasingly. “Horrible! With Wake! It’s a good thing he can’t hear that.”
“He would understand.”
“Is he coming tonight?”
“No. He has gone to town to a mission for men. It is the Paulist Father’s mission. Wakefield is becoming more Catholic than I am. He really knows much more about the ritual. He’s wonderful, and he appreciates the beauty of it so.”
“Yes,” agreed Clara thoughtfully. “But I wish he had come to see you. It’s a night for young lovers. Do you smell something sweet on the air?”
“I’ve noticed it. I don’t know what it is. I’m perfectly happy with you. Shall we go for a stroll?”
Clara’s feet ached from being on them all day, but she was never too tired to walk with Pauline. She so habitually thought of Pauline before herself that a wish expressed by the girl became her own also. She rose and put her arm about Pauline’s waist.
“Which way shall we go?” she asked.
“Through the wood and down into the ravine.”
“Don’t you think it will be damp there?”
“I don’t mind.” Pauline’s childishly egotistical answer overrode any further objection Clara might have had. Clasped together they crossed their plot of shaven grass and from it found the narrow path that led across an open field into a copse of oaks. Here the path wound steeply into the ravine, from where the hurried murmur of the stream could be heard.
As they entered the wood a blackbird, hidden among the dense branches, let fall his last low whistle before, startled by their steps, he sought a still more remote shelter for the night. After that came the whirring cry of the nightjar who seemed not to fear them. He spun his velvet flight about them as they moved, now singly, toward the little bridge that crossed the stream.
All this belonged to Jalna, and from the other side of the water another path led upward to the house. Along this path they now heard a third person moving. The young bracken, crushed by his footsteps, added its scent to the already sweet-scented air. A bright spark, making a downward curving arc, showed that he smoked.
In the minds of both mother and daughter was the certainty that the descending figure was Renny Whiteoak’s and both felt an almost equal pang of regret that she was not to meet him alone. No regret dulled the eagerness with which he greeted them. They had not yet spent a summer in the place where they now lived, and it came as a pleasant surprise to him to find them standing together on the bridge on this first warm evening.
Clara noticed before Pauline that his arm was in a sling. She gave an exclamation of dismay, then asked curtly:
“What did you do to it?”
“Nothing!” he laughed. “Honestly, nothing.”
“Well … if you are going to answer me as though I were a fool …” she said sulkily.
“What is it really?” asked Pauline. She drew close to him, trying to see his features, but she could only make out the brightness of his eyes, and the line of his lips against the cigarette.
He answered — “I was wrestling with the Daffodil tea shop and put it in its place too.”
“It’s a damned shame!” exclaimed Clara. “I’m absolutely sick about it. Is anything broken?”
“The collarbone.”
“And you’re due to ride in the Show in a few weeks. How awful!”
“It’s only a crack really. I shall be all right.”
Clara put out her hand and laid it gently on his shoulder. “I had rather the old tea shop had fallen down,” she said.
She kept her hand on his shoulder because she could not take it away. It was as though the maimed shoulder were a magnet that held her hand irresistibly. If he had backed from her across the bridge, she would have followed him as unconsciously as the iron the magnet. In the semi-darkness Pauline was aware of this irresistible drawing of her mother and she felt a wild rage against her. “When she goes,” Pauline thought, “I shall never be tortured like this any more. I shall be far happier.” She said — “I think I shall go back to the house. Wakefield may come.”
Without turning her head, Clara answered:
“I thought you said he had gone to the mission.”
“He may not stay. He said he might come rather late.”
“Oh, very well.”
Clara spoke, almost without knowing that words left her lips.