Where Angels Fear to Tread Part 12

"My dear Caroline," said Mrs. Herriton, "you must not brood over the thing. Let bygones be bygones. The child should worry you even less than it worries us. We never even mention it. It belongs to another world."

Miss Abbott got up without replying and turned to go. Her extreme gravity made Mrs. Herriton uneasy. "Of course," she added, "if Mrs.

Theobald decides on any plan that seems at all practicable--I must say I don't see any such--I shall ask if I may join her in it, for Irma's sake, and share in any possible expenses."

"Please would you let me know if she decides on anything. I should like to join as well."

"My dear, how you throw about your money! We would never allow it."

"And if she decides on nothing, please also let me know. Let me know in any case."

Mrs. Herriton made a point of kissing her.

"Is the young person mad?" burst out Philip as soon as she had departed.

"Never in my life have I seen such colossal impertinence. She ought to be well smacked, and sent back to Sunday-school."

His mother said nothing.

"But don't you see--she is practically threatening us? You can't put her off with Mrs. Theobald; she knows as well as we do that she is a nonent.i.ty. If we don't do anything she's going to raise a scandal--that we neglect our relatives, &c., which is, of course, a lie. Still she'll say it. Oh, dear, sweet, sober Caroline Abbott has a screw loose! We knew it at Monteriano. I had my suspicions last year one day in the train; and here it is again. The young person is mad."

She still said nothing.

"Shall I go round at once and give it her well? I'd really enjoy it."

In a low, serious voice--such a voice as she had not used to him for months--Mrs. Herriton said, "Caroline has been extremely impertinent.

Yet there may be something in what she says after all. Ought the child to grow up in that place--and with that father?"

Philip started and shuddered. He saw that his mother was not sincere.

Her insincerity to others had amused him, but it was disheartening when used against himself.

"Let us admit frankly," she continued, "that after all we may have responsibilities."

"I don't understand you, Mother. You are turning absolutely round. What are you up to?"

In one moment an impenetrable barrier had been erected between them.

They were no longer in smiling confidence. Mrs. Herriton was off on tactics of her own--tactics which might be beyond or beneath him.

His remark offended her. "Up to? I am wondering whether I ought not to adopt the child. Is that sufficiently plain?"

"And this is the result of half-a-dozen idiocies of Miss Abbott?"

"It is. I repeat, she has been extremely impertinent. None the less she is showing me my duty. If I can rescue poor Lilia's baby from that horrible man, who will bring it up either as Papist or infidel--who will certainly bring it up to be vicious--I shall do it."

"You talk like Harriet."

"And why not?" said she, flus.h.i.+ng at what she knew to be an insult.

"Say, if you choose, that I talk like Irma. That child has seen the thing more clearly than any of us. She longs for her little brother. She shall have him. I don't care if I am impulsive."

He was sure that she was not impulsive, but did not dare to say so. Her ability frightened him. All his life he had been her puppet. She let him wors.h.i.+p Italy, and reform Sawston--just as she had let Harriet be Low Church. She had let him talk as much as he liked. But when she wanted a thing she always got it.

And though she was frightening him, she did not inspire him with reverence. Her life, he saw, was without meaning. To what purpose was her diplomacy, her insincerity, her continued repression of vigour? Did they make any one better or happier? Did they even bring happiness to herself? Harriet with her gloomy peevish creed, Lilia with her clutches after pleasure, were after all more divine than this well-ordered, active, useless machine.

Now that his mother had wounded his vanity he could criticize her thus.

But he could not rebel. To the end of his days he could probably go on doing what she wanted. He watched with a cold interest the duel between her and Miss Abbott. Mrs. Herriton's policy only appeared gradually. It was to prevent Miss Abbott interfering with the child at all costs, and if possible to prevent her at a small cost. Pride was the only solid element in her disposition. She could not bear to seem less charitable than others.

"I am planning what can be done," she would tell people, "and that kind Caroline Abbott is helping me. It is no business of either of us, but we are getting to feel that the baby must not be left entirely to that horrible man. It would be unfair to little Irma; after all, he is her half-brother. No, we have come to nothing definite."

Miss Abbott was equally civil, but not to be appeased by good intentions. The child's welfare was a sacred duty to her, not a matter of pride or even of sentiment. By it alone, she felt, could she undo a little of the evil that she had permitted to come into the world. To her imagination Monteriano had become a magic city of vice, beneath whose towers no person could grow up happy or pure. Sawston, with its semi-detached houses and sn.o.bby schools, its book teas and bazaars, was certainly petty and dull; at times she found it even contemptible. But it was not a place of sin, and at Sawston, either with the Herritons or with herself, the baby should grow up.

As soon as it was inevitable, Mrs. Herriton wrote a letter for Waters and Adamson to send to Gino--the oddest letter; Philip saw a copy of it afterwards. Its ostensible purpose was to complain of the picture postcards. Right at the end, in a few nonchalant sentences, she offered to adopt the child, provided that Gino would undertake never to come near it, and would surrender some of Lilia's money for its education.

"What do you think of it?" she asked her son. "It would not do to let him know that we are anxious for it."

"Certainly he will never suppose that."

"But what effect will the letter have on him?"

"When he gets it he will do a sum. If it is less expensive in the long run to part with a little money and to be clear of the baby, he will part with it. If he would lose, he will adopt the tone of the loving father."

"Dear, you're shockingly cynical." After a pause she added, "How would the sum work out?"

"I don't know, I'm sure. But if you wanted to ensure the baby being posted by return, you should have sent a little sum to HIM. Oh, I'm not cynical--at least I only go by what I know of him. But I am weary of the whole show. Weary of Italy. Weary, weary, weary. Sawston's a kind, pitiful place, isn't it? I will go walk in it and seek comfort."

He smiled as he spoke, for the sake of not appearing serious. When he had left her she began to smile also.

It was to the Abbotts' that he walked. Mr. Abbott offered him tea, and Caroline, who was keeping up her Italian in the next room, came in to pour it out. He told them that his mother had written to Signor Carella, and they both uttered fervent wishes for her success.

"Very fine of Mrs. Herriton, very fine indeed," said Mr. Abbott, who, like every one else, knew nothing of his daughter's exasperating behaviour. "I'm afraid it will mean a lot of expense. She will get nothing out of Italy without paying."

"There are sure to be incidental expenses," said Philip cautiously.

Then he turned to Miss Abbott and said, "Do you suppose we shall have difficulty with the man?"

"It depends," she replied, with equal caution.

"From what you saw of him, should you conclude that he would make an affectionate parent?"

"I don't go by what I saw of him, but by what I know of him."

"Well, what do you conclude from that?"

"That he is a thoroughly wicked man."

"Yet thoroughly wicked men have loved their children. Look at Rodrigo Borgia, for example."

"I have also seen examples of that in my district."

With this remark the admirable young woman rose, and returned to keep up her Italian. She puzzled Philip extremely. He could understand enthusiasm, but she did not seem the least enthusiastic. He could understand pure cussedness, but it did not seem to be that either.

Apparently she was deriving neither amus.e.m.e.nt nor profit from the struggle. Why, then, had she undertaken it? Perhaps she was not sincere.

Perhaps, on the whole, that was most likely. She must be professing one thing and aiming at another. What the other thing could be he did not stop to consider. Insincerity was becoming his stock explanation for anything unfamiliar, whether that thing was a kindly action or a high ideal.