Part 11 (1/2)

”Oh, one may as well try things. I've no doubt there's something in it besides the nonsense.”

Mrs. Hilary spoke jauntily, with hungry, unquiet, seeking eyes that would not meet Rosalind's. She was afraid that Rosalind would find out that she wanted to be cured of being miserable, of being jealous, of having inordinate pa.s.sions about so little. Rosalind, in some ways a great stupid cow, was uncannily clever when it came to being spiteful and knowing about you the things you didn't want known. It must be horrible to be psycho-a.n.a.lysed by Rosalind, who had no pity and no reticence. The things about you would not only be known but spread abroad among all those whom Rosalind met. A vile, dreadful tongue.

”You wouldn't, I expect, like _me_ to a.n.a.lyse you,” said Rosalind. ”Not a course, I mean, but just once, to advise you better whom to go to. It'd have the advantage, anyhow, that I'd do it free. Anyone else will charge you three guineas at the least.”

”I don't think,” said Mrs. Hilary, ”that relations--or connections--ought to do one another. No, I'd better go to someone I don't know, if you'll give me the name and address.”

”I thought you'd probably rather,” Rosalind said in her slow, soft, cruel voice, like a cat's purr. ”Well, I'll write down the address for you.

It's Dr. Evans: he'll probably pa.s.s you on to someone down at the seaside, if he considers you a suitable case for treatment.”

He would; of course he would. Mrs. Hilary felt no doubt as to that.

Gilbert came in from the British Museum. He looked thin and nervous and sallow amid all the splendour. He kissed his mother, thinking how queer and untidy she looked, a stranger and pilgrim in Rosalind's drawing-room.

He too might look there at times a stranger and pilgrim, but at least, if not voluptuous, he was neat. He glanced proudly and yet ironically from his mother to his magnificent wife, taking in and understanding the supra-normal redundancies of her make-up.

”Rosalind,” said Mrs. Hilary, knowing that it would be less than useless to ask Rosalind to keep her secret, ”has been recommending me a psycho-a.n.a.lyst doctor. I think it is worth while trying if I can get my insomnia cured that way.”

”My dear mother! After all your fulminations against the tribe! Well, I think you're quite right to give it a trial. Why don't you get Rosalind to take you on?”

The fond pride in his voice! Yet there was in his eyes, as they rested for a moment on Rosalind, something other than fond pride; something more like mockery.

Mrs. Hilary got up to go, and fired across the rich room the one shot in her armoury.

”I believe,” she said, ”that Rosalind prefers chiefly to take men patients. She wouldn't want to be bored with an old woman.”

The shot drove straight into Gilbert's light-strung sensitiveness.

Sh.e.l.l-shocked officers; any other officers; anything male, presentable and pa.s.sably young; these were Rosalind's patients; he knew it, and everyone else knew it. For a moment his smile was fixed into the deliberate grin of pain. Mrs. Hilary saw it, saw Gilbert far back down the years, a small boy standing up to punishment with just that brave, nervous grin. Sensitive, defiant, vulnerable, fastidiously proud--so Gilbert had always been and always would be.

Remorsefully she clung to him.

”Come and see me out, dearest boy” (so she called him, though Jim was really that)--and she ignored Rosalind's slow, unconcerned protest against her last remark. ”Why, mother, you know I _asked_ to do you” ... but she couldn't prevent Rosalind from seeing her out too, hanging her about with all the ridiculous parcels, kissing her on both cheeks.

Gilbert was cool and dry, pretending she hadn't hurt him. He would always take hurts like that, with that deadly, steely lightness. By its deadliness, its steeliness, she knew that it was all true (and much more besides) that she had heard about Rosalind and her patients.

5

She walked down to the bus with hot eyes. Rosalind had yawned softly and largely behind her as she went down the front steps. Wicked, monstrous creature! Lying about Gilbert's clever, nervous, eager life in great soft folds, and throttling it. If Gilbert had been a man, a real male man, instead of a writer and therefore effeminate, decadent, he would have beaten her into decent behaviour. As it was she would ruin him, and he would go under, not able to bear it, but cynically grinning still.

Perhaps the sooner the better. Anything was better than the way Rosalind went on now, disgracing him and getting talked about, and making him hate his mother for disliking her. He hadn't even come with her to the bus, to carry her parcels for her.... That wasn't like Gilbert. As a rule he had excellent manners, though he was not affectionate like Jim.

Jim, Jim, Jim. Should she go to Harley Street? What was the use? She would find only Margery there; Jim would be out. Margery had no serious faults except the one, that she had taken the first place in Jim's affections. Before Margery, Neville had had this place, but Mrs. Hilary had been able, with Neville's never failing and skilful help, to disguise this from herself. You can't disguise a wife's place in her husband's heart. And Jim's splendid children too, whom she adored--they looked at her with Margery's brown eyes instead of Jim's grey-blue ones. And they preferred really (she knew it) their maternal grandmother, the jolly lady who took them to the theatres.

Mrs. Hilary pa.s.sed a church. Religion. Some people found help there. But it required so much of you, was so exhausting in its demands. Besides, it seemed infinitely far away--an improbable, sad, remote thing, that gave you no human comfort. Psycho-a.n.a.lysis was better; that opened gates into a new life. ”Know thyself,” Mrs. Hilary murmured, kindling at the prospect. Most knowledge was dull, but never that.

”I will ring up from Waterloo and make an appointment,” she thought.

CHAPTER VI