“Oh, Mother! It’s impossible to pity father; it always was. Except for his moustache being gone, I don’t see much change anyway. It’s you I pity. He simply can’t stay here. Why, everybody thinks you’re a widow.”
“People generally know more than they seem to, Beryl.”
“Nobody’s ever given us a hint. Why couldn’t he have consulted us?”
“He didn’t think of us when he did that horrible thing. And it was so gratuitous, unless----! Mother, sometimes I’ve thought he had to do it; that he was her--her lover as well as her doctor!”
“If it had been that, he’d have told me. Your father is always justified in his own eyes.”
“He’s having a bath as hot as he can bear it. All he said was: ‘This is the first thing you do when you go in, and the first thing you do when you come out--symmetrical, isn’t it?’ I’ve got to take him a cup of coffee. It’s really too thick! The servants can’t help knowing that a Dr. Raider who gets into the bath the moment he comes to call must be our father.”
“Is it? He doesn’t show a sign of shame. He’ll call it from the house-tops. I thought, of course, he’d go abroad.”
“If he were down in the mouth, one could feel sorry for him. But he looks as pleased as Punch with himself. And it’s such a beastly sort of crime--how am I to put it to Mabel? If I just say he’s been in prison, she’ll think it’s something even worse. Mother, do insist on his going at once. We can tell the servants he’s an uncle--who’s been in contact with smallpox.”
“_You_ take him the coffee, Mother--oh, you can’t, if he’s to be an uncle! Jack, tell him nobody here knows, and mother can’t stand it; and hurry up! It’s half-past six now.”
The son passed his fingers through his brushed-back hair; his face looked youthful, desperate.
“Tell him, Jack, that I’ll come out to him, wherever he likes to go; that I always expected him to arrange that; that this is--too difficult----” She covered her lips with her hand.
“All right, Mother! I’ll jolly well make him understand. But don’t launch out about it to the servants yet. Suppose it’s we who have to go? It’s his house!”
“Yes; I bought it with his money under the power of attorney he left.”
“It’s _all_ dreadful, but we must consider _him_.”
“It does seem rather a case of ‘coldly received.’ But father’s always been shut up in himself. He can’t expect us suddenly to slobber over him. If he’s had a horrible time, so have we.”