The Empty Sack Part 5

"I didn't know there was any question of my doing that."

"That boy will never be anything better than a university professor-never in this world; and if it comes to our forbidding it, forbid it we shall without hesitation."

The girl's head was flung up. Boredom and indifference pa.s.sed out of the strange eyes. For an instant the conflict of wills seemed about to break out into mutual challenge. It was Edith who first regained enough mastery of self to say, quietly.

"You surely wouldn't take that responsibility-whatever I did."

The soft answer having warned the mother of the danger of collision, she subsided to an easier, if a more fretful, tone.

"And Bob's such a worry, too. If your father knew about this Follett girl, I think he would go wild."

"But we don't know anything ourselves-beyond the few hints dropped by Hubert Wray which I'm sure he didn't mean."

"Well, I'm worried. It's the war, I suppose. If he'd only settle down to work-"

"He won't settle down till he marries; and if he marries, it will have to be some girl he's in love with."

"If he were to marry a girl of that cla.s.s-"

"Girl of what cla.s.s? What's the good word?"

Mrs. Collingham turned on her son, who stood on the threshold of one of the French windows.

"We're talking about men and women marrying outside of their own cla.s.s, Bob, and I was trying to say how fatal it was."

"Good Lord! mother, do people still think things like that? I thought they'd rung the bells on them even at Marillo. Wasn't it one of the things we fought for in the war-to wipe out the lines of caste?"

"But not to wipe out ideals, Bob. What fathers and mothers have worked to build up their sons fought to maintain."

Max, the police-dog puppy, who had been poking his nose between Bob's legs, now squeezed his vigorous person through the opening and came out on the terrace joyously. Wagging his powerful tail and sniffing about each of the ladies in turn, he seemed to be saying: "Don't you see that I'm here? Now cheer up, everybody, and let's have a good time."

Bob made a feint at seconding this invitation. Going up to his mother, he slipped an arm round her waist and kissed her.

"Old lady, you're years behind the times. What fathers and mothers built turned out to be a rotten old world which they've handed to us to bolster up. We're tackling the job as well as we can, but you must give us a free hand."

Releasing herself from his embrace, she stood with an air of authority.

"If giving you a free hand means looking on at the frustration of our hopes, you'll have to learn, Bob, that your father and mother still have some of the energy that placed you where you are."

"Of course you've placed us where we are, mother dear," Edith agreed, pacifically, "but that's just the point. Because we are where you've placed us, we're crazy to go on to something else. Isn't that the way of life-the perpetual struggle for what we haven't got? Because you and father didn't have a big house and a big position to begin with, you worked till you got them. Bob and I were born to them, and so-"

"It's this way, old lady," Bob broke in. "All your generation had bigness on the brain. It was a kind of disease like the water that swells a baby's head. They used to think it was a specially American disease till they found out it was English, French, German, and every other old thing. The whole lot of you puffed up till the earth hadn't room for you, and you made the war to push one another off."

"I didn't make the war, Bob. I've never been anything but a poor mother, striving and praying for her children."

"Well, you did push one another off-to the tune of ten or twelve millions, mostly the young. Since then, the universal disease of swelled head is being got under control, as they say of epidemics. Only the left-overs catch it still, and Edith and I aren't that. Hardly anyone of our age is. We just don't take the germ. Not that we blame you and your lot, old lady-"

"Thanks, Bob."

"Oh, don't thank me. I'm just telling you."

"And the point of your homily is-"

"That our generation all over the world has got out of Marillo Park.

Marillo Park is a back number. It's as out of date as the hat you wore five years ago. You couldn't give it away to the poor, because the poor don't wear that kind of thing, and the rich have gone on to a new fashion. Listen, old lady. The thing I'd hate worst of all for dad and you is to see you left behind, trying to put over the footlights a lot of old gags that the audience swallowed in its time, but which don't get a laugh any more. The actor who tries to do that is pa.s.s-ay forever-"

"If you'd keep to English, Bob, I should understand you a little better."

Bob grew excited, laying down the law on the palm of his left hand with the forefinger of the right, while Max, all aquiver, scored the points with his terrific tail.

"I'll not only keep to English, but I'll tell you the line to take if you want to remain the up-to-date, bright-as-a-b.u.t.ton old lady you are."

"I should be grateful."

"Then here goes. Take a long breath. Keep your wig on. Put your feet in plaster casts so as not to kick." He summoned his forces to speak strongly. "If Edith was to pick out a man she wanted to marry-and I was to pick out a girl-no matter who-it would be the chic new stuff for father and you-"

But the chic new stuff for father and her was not laid down on the palm of the hand for the reason that a portly shadow was seen to move within the dimness of the drawing-room. At the same time, Max's joy was stifled by the appearance on the terrace of Dauphin, the Irish setter, who was consciously the dog _en t.i.tre_ of the master of the house. Mrs.

Collingham composed herself. Edith picked up a tennis ball from the flags and jumped it on her racket. Bob put a cigarette in his mouth and struck a match. It was the unwritten law of the family not to risk intimate discussion before a tribunal too august.

Once he had reached the terrace, it was plain that Collingham was tired.

His shoulders were hunched; his walk had no spring in it.

"I'm all in," he sighed, sinking into the teakwood chair.

"Poor father!"

Edith dropped a hand on his shoulder. He drew it down to his lips and kissed it.

"You'd like your tea, wouldn't you?" The solicitude was his wife's. "We were just going to have it. Bob, do find Gossip and tell him to bring it here."

Bob limped into the house and out again. By the time he had returned, his father was saying:

"Yes; it's been a trying day. Among other things I've had to dismiss old Follett."

"The devil you have!"

The exclamation was so heartfelt as to turn all eyes on the young man.

"Why, Bob dear," his mother asked, craftily, "what difference does it make to you?"

Bob did his best to recapture a position he was not yet ready to abandon.

"It may not make any difference to me, but-but how is he going to live?"

"Is that your responsibility?"

Edith came to her brother's rescue.