Though he had not expected to hear from her on landing, and still less to see her at the dock, he was faintly disappointed to receive neither of these forms of greeting. He reminded himself that not her coldness, but her inexperience, would account for this, and so made the more of his anticipations for the afternoon. She had written to him while he was away, short, noncommittal letters, betraying a mind unused to correspondence rather than a heart opposed to it. Lack of habit, he told himself, would for a long time to come make her seem unresponsive when she would only be hesitating and observant.
It was the hot season at Marillo, and those houses which were not closed were somnolent. At Collingham Lodge, Max, with his madly joyful demonstrations, was the only expression of life. Within the house, the shades were down, the furniture befrocked. Nevertheless, it was home, and all the more home after the alien pageantry of the tropics and the south. Having bathed and changed his clothes, he found pleasure in roaming from one dim airless room to another, as if he had been absent for a year.
It was a greater pleasure for the reason that, ever since receiving his father's amazing cablegram, the vague antagonism he had felt for two or three years toward his parents had given place to affection and gratitude. They had seemingly come round after all to acknowledging his right to be himself. The concession gave him a sense of loving them, of loving the things that belonged to them. He strolled into their rooms, looking about on the objects they used, as though in this way he got some contact with their personalities.
As yet, Jennie's family hardly entered the sphere of his conceptions. He knew she had a mother and sisters; he had seen and spoken to Teddy at the bank. But even the knowledge that the boy was in jail for killing a man didn't bring him or them near to him as realities. While there were things he should do for the boy, they would not be done for him, but for Jennie. What concerned her naturally concerned her husband; but otherwise his father and mother came first. For this new generosity on their part, for this opening of the arms, his heart glowed toward them, making them sensibly his own.