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her something shameful--a kind of blasphemy, a denial of what was holy. To Rachel the
reverence for holy things came naturally. It was Elinor's lack of this reverence, her
inability even to realize that holy things _were_ holy, which made it impossible for Mrs.
Quarles to love her daughter-in-law as much as she would have liked.
 On her side Elinor admired, respected and genuinely liked her husband's mother.
For her, the chronic difficulty was to establish effectual contact with a person whose
ruling ideas and motives seemed to her so oddly incomprehensible and even so absurd.
Mrs. Quarles was unobtrusively but ardently religious and lived to the best of her ability
in accordance with her beliefs. Elinor admired, but felt that it was all rather absurd and
superfluous. Her education had been orthodox. But she never remembered a time, even in
her childhood, when she seriously believed what people told her about the other world
and its inhabitants. The other world bored her; she was interested only in this.
Confirmation had evoked in her no more enthusiasm than a visit to the theatre, indeed
considerably less. Her adolescence had passed without the trace of a religious crisis.
'It all seems to me just nonsense,' she would say when the matter was discussed in
her presence. And there was no affectation in her words, they were not uttered
provocatively. She simply stated a fact of her personal history. Religion and, along with
religion, all transcendental morality, all metaphysical speculation seemed to her
nonsensical in precisely the same way as the smell of Gorgonzola seemed to her
disgusting. There was no getting behind the immediate experience. Often, on occasions
like this, she wished there were. She would have liked to cross the abyss which separated
her from Mrs. Quarles. As it was, she felt a certain uneasiness when she was with her
mother-in-law; she hesitated in her presence to express her feelings or to say what she
thought. For she had found, only too often, that the frank utterance of what seemed to her
perfectly natural sentiments and reasonable opinions, was apt to distress her mother-in-
law, to strike her as strange and shocking. It had happened again now, as she could see
from the expression which showed itself for an instant on Mrs. Quarles's mobile and
sensitive face. What had it been this time? Conscious of no offence, Elinor could only
wonder. In future, she decided, she would volunteer nothing of her own; she would just
agree with what was said.
As it happened, however, the next topic of conversation to be broached was one in
which Elinor was too deeply interested to be able to keep her new-made resolution.
Moreover it was one on which, as she knew by experience, she could speak freely
without risk of unintentional offence. For where Philip was concerned, Elinor's feelings
and opinions seemed to Mrs. Quarles entirely appropriate.
'And big Philip?' she now asked.
'You see how well he looks,' Elinor answered for his health, though she knew that
the question had not concerned his bodily well-being. It was with a certain dread that she
looked forward to the conversation that impended. At the same time, however, she was
glad to have an opportunity of discussing that which so constantly and distressingly
occupied her thoughts.
'Yes, yes, I can see that,' said Mrs. Quarles. 'But what I really meant was: how is
he in himself? How is he with you?'
There was a silence. Elinor frowned slightly and looked at the floor. 'Remote,' she
said at last.
Mrs. Quarles sighed. 'He was always that,' she said. 'Always remote.'
He too, it seemed to her, was lacking in something--in the desire and the capacity
to give himself, to go out and meet his fellows, even those who loved him, even those he
loved. Geoffrey had been so different. At the memory of her dead son Mrs. Quarles felt
her whole being invaded by a poignant sadness. If anyone had suggested that she had
loved him more than she loved Philip, she would have protested. Her own feelings, she
felt sure, had been initially the same. But Geoffrey had permitted himself to be loved
more fully, more intimately than his brother. If only Philip had allowed her to love him
more! But there had always been barriers between them, barriers of his erecting. Geoffrey
had come out to meet her, had given that he might receive. But Philip had always been
reluctant and parsimonious. He had always shut doors when she approached, always
locked up his mind lest she should catch a glimpse of his secrets. She had never known
what he really felt and thought. 'Even as a little boy,' she said aloud.
'And now he has his work,' said Elinor after a pause. 'Which makes it worse. It's
like a castle on the top of a mountain, his work. He shuts himself up in it and he's
impregnable.'
Mrs. Quarles smiled sadly. 'Impregnable.' It was the right word. Even as a little
boy he had been impregnable. 'Perhaps in the end he'll surrender of his own accord.'
'To me?' said Elinor. 'Or to someone else? It wouldn't be much satisfaction if it
was to somebody else, would it? Though when I'm feeling unselfish,' she added, 'I wish
he'd surrender to anyone--_anyone_, for his own good.'
Elinor's words set Mrs. Quarles thinking of her husband--not resentfully, though
he had done wrong, though he had hurt her, but pityingly, rather, and solicitously. For she
could never feel that it was entirely his fault. It was his misfortune.
Elinor sighed. 'I can't really expect to receive his surrender,' she said. 'When one
has become a habit, one can't very well suddenly turn into an overwhelming revelation.'
Mrs. Quarles shook her head. In recent years Sidney's overwhelming revelations
had come from such unexpectedly humble sources. The little kitchenmaid, the
gamekeeper's daughter. How could he, she wondered for the thousandth time, how
_could_ he? It was incomprehensible.
'If at least,' she said almost in a whisper, 'you had God as a companion.' God had
always been her comfort, God and the doing of God's will. She could never understand
how people could get through life without Him. 'If only you could find God.'
Elinor's smile was sarcastic. Remarks of this sort annoyed her by being so
ridiculously beside the point. 'It might be simpler,' she began, but checked herself after
the first words. She had meant to say that it might be simpler perhaps to find a man. But
she remembered her resolution and was silent.
'What were you saying?'
Elinor shook her head. 'Nothing.'
* * * *
Fortunately for Mr. Quarles the British Museum had no Essex branch. It was only
in London that he could make researches and collect the documents necessary for his
book. The house in Portman Square was let (Mr. Quarles blamed the income tax, but his
own speculations in sugar were mainly responsible); and it was in a modest little flat in
Bloomsbury ('convenientlah nyah the Museum') that he now camped whenever the claims
of scholarship brought him to town.
During the last few weeks the claims had been more than usually peremptory. His
visits to London had been frequent and prolonged. After the second of these visits Mrs.
Quarles had wondered, sadly, whether Sidney had found another woman. And when, on
his return from a third journey and, a few days later, on the eve of a fourth, he began to
groan ostentatiously over the vast complexity of the history of democracy among the
Ancient Indians, Rachel felt convinced that the woman had been found. She knew Sidney
well enough to be certain that, if he had really been reading about the Ancient Indians, he [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]