This Freedom Part 35

Look, there they are! She's down with one or other at some gala at their schools. It's Founders' Day at Tidborough, or it's at Doda's school on Prize Day. Aren't they just proud to be with her and show her off, their lovely, brilliant mother so different from the other rather fussy mothers that come crowding down! All the masters and all the mistresses know the uncommon woman that she is. The children, growing older, know it. "You must be very proud of your mother." It has been said (the self-same words) to each of them by their respective princ.i.p.als. Nice! Nice to have your children proud of you!

Look, there's Huggo telling her how the headmaster had said the thing to him (she's just walking with her Huggo across the cricket ground on Founders' Day). "And a sloppy young a.s.s that heard him,"

says Huggo, "oh, an awful a.s.s, asked me why the Head had said I must be proud of you, and I told him, and I said, 'I bet you're not proud of your mother.' And he said, 'Of my father, I am. He got the V. C. in South Africa.' So I said, 'Yes, but proud of your mother?' So this frightful a.s.s said--what do you think he said?

'No, I'm not proud of my mother. I don't think I'd want to be. I only love her.'"

Huggo mimicked the voice in which the frightful a.s.s had said this; and Rosalie, at the words and at his tone, had across her body a sudden chill, as it were physical. She wanted to say something.

But it was the kind of thing you couldn't, somehow, say to Huggo, at fifteen. But she said it. "Huggo, you do love me, don't you?"

He turned to her a face curiously thin-lipped. "Oh, I say, mother, do look out, some one might hear you!"

Her Huggo! (She wants to stop the pa.s.sing scenes and to stretch out to him across the years her arms.) Her Huggo! The one that first along her arm had laid; the sc.r.a.p that first within her eyes adoring tears had brimmed; her baby boy, her tiny manling, her tiny hugging one, her first born! It is in retrospection that she sits and there's expelled for ever from her face that aspect mutinous, intolerant, defiant, that used to visit there. That, when she housed it, was the aspect of the young man Ishmael whose hand was against every man. She is like Hagar now to be imagined, sitting over against these things a good way off, as it were a bowshot.

Strike on!

Her Huggo! Look, that's the day they got that bad report of him from school. She had questioned Harry about a letter in his post and, naming the headmaster of Tidborough, "Yes, it's from Hammond,"

he had answered her.

"About Huggo?"

"Yes, it's about Huggo."

Nothing more. They were beginning to have exchanges terse as that.

She said presently, "I suppose it would interest me, wouldn't it?"

His face was very hard. "Do you want to know the answer I feel like giving to that?"

"I've asked for it, haven't I, Harry?"

"You shall have it. The answer is that I think what the letter says implicates you."

She preserved her composure. She by now had had practice in preserving her composure. "What's the matter, Harry?"

"Hammond says--as good as says--that Huggo will have to be withdrawn from Tidborough."

She knew perfectly well that this was only leading up to something.

"May I hear?"

"You may." He took up the letter and read from it. "'Apart from that, and it would of course be the reason given--the other, I am confident, is susceptible of change--apart from that, the boy has now twice failed to keep his place in the school. If he does not get his remove in the coming term I shall be compelled to ask you to remove him.'" He put down the letter and looked at her. "That'll be nice, won't it?"

She made an appeal. "Harry, don't. I mean, don't talk like that.

It won't happen."

He softened in no degree. He said sternly: "It will happen."

She persevered. "I'm quite sure it won't. You've only got to talk seriously to Huggo. This coming holidays you can get him some coaching. He's got brains."

There was a steely note in Harry's voice: "Oh, he's got brains. He can have coaching. It's what he hasn't got and what he can't get that's going to get Huggo withdrawn."

"What is it you mean?"

"A home."

She slightly raised the fingers of her hands and dropped them. This subject!

Harry said: "Hammond says more than I've told you."

"I supposed he did. 'Apart from that.' Apart from what?"

"It's Huggo's character he's writing to me about. This is what he says. 'The boy, though young, has not a good influence in his house.

If I may suggest it, he does not, during the holidays, see enough of his home.'"

He folded the letter and returned it to its envelope. "Does it strike you that is going to be easy for me to answer?"

"It might be easier, Harry, if your tone made it possible for us to discuss it."

He gave a sound that was glint, as it were, of the blade in his voice: "Our discussions! I am a little tired of that blind alley, Rosalie."

She said sombrely, "And I."

"Will you suggest how the letter is to be answered?"

She said: "It's plain. If you agree with Mr. Hammond, it's plain.

You can say you will stop Huggo's invitations. Harry, we're not by any means the only family that doesn't spend the whole of its holidays together. It's rather the practice nowadays, young people visiting their friends. If you think Huggo shouldn't--you can say so."

"Yes, I can say that. Tell me this. Is it going to give him a home?"

Her voice sprung from a sudden higher note. "Oh, you insist, you insist!" she cried. "You speak of blind alleys, but you insist."

He touched the letter. "This gives me ground for my insistence.

This is an outsider, a stranger, appreciating how we live. This is my son, at my old school, condemned by how we live."

She interjected, "A schoolmaster's primeval animosity--blame the parent."

"Rosalie, a parent's primeval duty. We are responsible for the children. We have a duty towards them."

She softly struck her hands together. "Ah, how often, how often, and always worse! You said just now that I am implicated. It's always I. You say we have a responsibility towards the children. But you don't mean us, you mean me. Why I more than you? Why am I the accused?"

He began, "Because you--"

"Ah, don't, don't!"

But he concluded. "Because you are a woman."

Her voice that had gone high went numb. She made a gesture, as to the same reason and with the same words she'd made before, of weariness with this thing, "Ah, my G.o.d, that reason!"

Strike on!

Look, there's Huggo, failing again to get his remove, superannuated, withdrawn. There's Harry having a scene with the boy. There ought to be tears. There are tears. But they're in Harry's voice and twice he wipes his eyes. They're not in Huggo's.