Henry got up from his chair, and moved restlessly towards the mantelpiece.
"We shall be here indefinitely," he said. "You must all learn to look upon this house as home, now you are getting older. You'll be going to school, Hal, next term. I'm not certain about the holidays.
Perhaps we might all go and stay with Aunt Eliza in Saunby."
The children stared at him aghast. Kitty, who had returned with the cards, stood on one leg, biting the end of her hair.
"Aren't we ever going home to Clonmere again?" she said.
Henry avoided their eyes. He did not know what to say.
"Yes, of course… sometime," he said, "but it's let at the moment; I thought perhaps they would have told you at Lletharrog. Some people called Boles, friends of Uncle Bill and Aunt Fanny, are living there."
The children went on looking at him without understanding.
"Other people?" said Hal. "Living in our home?
Using our things? They won't touch mamma's piano, will they?"
"No," said Henry, "no, I'm sure they won't."
"How long are they going to be there?" asked Molly.
Each one of them looked shaken and distressed. He had not realised that they were so fond of their home. He thought that children liked change, enjoyed variety. He began to feel irritated. They were staring at him as though he were in some way to blame.
"I don't know," he said, "it depends upon their plans."
He had not the courage to tell them that Clonmere had been let to the Boles for seven years.
"There are many advantages in London," he said, smiling, and talking rather swiftly. "You two girls will be able to go to dancing classes, and music lessons, and all that sort of thing. And meet other children. Hal must learn to find his level with other boys, before he goes to Eton. All your uncles agreed with me that London was much the best place for education. There will be plenty for you all to do. And I promise you that I'll give you whatever you want."
He felt as though he were pleading with them, that they were his judges. Why should he feel this? They were only children, Molly not yet thirteen. "I want to do what is best for all of you," he said. "I think, I'm certain in fact, that this is what mamma would have wished."
The children did not say anything. Kitty slowly shuffled the pack of Happy Families. Hal drew imaginary lines on the table. Molly reached for the pack of cards from Kitty, and handed them to Henry.
"Will you deal, father?" she said.
They drew their chairs to the table, and as he dealt out the cards he could feel the constraint amongst them.
The pleasure was gone and they were strangers, being polite to one another for courtesy's sake.
"I've hurt them," thought Henry. "I've broken their faith in some way. And there's no one to tell me what to say, what to do."
He could feel their eyes upon him as he pretended to examine his cards….
"They'll forget all about it," he told himself; "children accustom themselves to everything. That's the blessing of being a child."
And as the months passed Henry felt this to be true, because none of them even mentioned the idea of going home again. They were content, he decided, and because he wanted to believe this, he never questioned them, for fear that they should tell him they were unhappy, The months became one, two years, and except for occasional visits to Saunby and Lletharrog they did not leave the house in London.
The girls attended classes, Hal went to school, the little Lizette learnt to talk and to walk, limping on her poor club foot that could not be straightened. Henry, restless, uncertain, feeling that his children needed a deeper understanding than he could give them, evaded responsibility by giving them presents; while in his heart all the while there was a feeling that what he did and what he gave them brought them no closer to him.
When a letter came to him from his mother in the spring of '74, condoling with him on the death of Aunt Eliza at Saunby and asking for a rather larger cheque than usual, Henry determined, quite suddenly, to go out to Nice and stay with her.
He had not seen her for nearly seven years.
Perhaps, at last, he would be able to persuade her to return and live with them. The truth was that he was lonely, in mind and body and soul, and Molly at fifteen was still too young to be a true companion. The thought of his mother's gaiety, her wit and her charm, seemed all the more endearing after an absence of seven years. Surely she, more than anyone in the world, would understand this feeling of unbearable loneliness, that became worse, not easier, as the years passed?
He went to France the day after he had seen Hal safely off to his first half at Eton.
The air was brilliant in Nice and the sun shone.
He called a porter, and collecting his baggage, went in search of a fiacre to drive him to the villa.
No attempt on his mother's part to meet him at the station. She had probably forgotten the day of his arrival. It was pleasant driving along the wide promenade, watching the people. The driver turned away from the sea-front and drove up behind the town, threading his way through a network of little, narrow roads. Once or twice he had to ask his way. They came at last to the Rue des Lilas (in which there were no lilacs), and stopped in front of a small, shabby villa that badly needed a coat of paint. The gate was half off the hinges. When Henry opened it a bell jangled shrilly, and two dogs set up a chorus of barking from inside the house. No one came to the door, however. The driver put down the luggage on the step, and waited.
Henry went round to the back of the villa. The door was also closed, and the dogs went on barking from inside the house. Henry returned to the front.
"Nobody about," he told the driver.
He became aware that a woman was watching him from a window of the villa next door. He turned his back, and once more wrestled with the handle of the front door. It was the right house, for looking through the glass pane of the door he could see the sitting-room, and a photograph of Johnnie on the mantelpiece.
Then a voice called: "Try under the loose tile-you may find the key there."
The woman from next door was standing on her verandah. She was about forty-six, rather handsome, with steel-grey hair and strikingly blue eyes. She was obviously amused at the situation.
"Thank you," said Henry, taking off his hat.
"I don't appear to be expected."
He bent down, and found the key under the tile.
He held it up for the woman to see. She laughed, and shrugged her shoulders.
"I thought it would either be there or in the flower-bed," she said, "Mrs. Brodrick is usually a bit casual about her hiding-places."
Henry thanked her again, and paying off the driver, he took his luggage inside the villa. The dogs came out of the sitting-room, sniffing at his heels. The room smelt of them. It was stuffy, the windows were all shut. There was a saucer of food for them in one corner, and biscuit spilt upon the floor. Dead flowers were stuffed into cracked vases. The chairs and sofas were creased and stained where the dogs had been lying. On a table was a cup that had held coffee, the dregs were in it still. One of his mother's shoes lay beside it, and the other had been kicked under a chair. A wood fire in the grate had not been cleared.
Henry left the room and went into the dining-room. This was obviously never used. His mother had her meals on a tray in the sitting-room. The kitchen was full of crockery that had not been washed, and there were vegetables, uncooked, crammed into a coal bucket. He went upstairs and found his mother's bedroom. Her clothes were littered about the room, and the bed had not been made. There was a tray of breakfast things still lying on the end of the bed. Across the passage was a spare-room, intended no doubt for him. There were clean sheets and blankets folded on the bed, but the bed was not made up. He went downstairs and stood looking out on the neglected garden, feeling sick at heart, and filled with depression. Somehow he had not expected it to be like this. He had made a different picture in his mind. The Englishwoman was still on her verandah, watering some flowers in a pot.