Chapter 36 - Page 2

afternoon at Siena, he wondered? Did she ever think of it at all?... It
was she who had asked Moffatt to dine. She had said: "Father brought
him home one day at Apex.... I don't remember ever having seen him
since"--and the man she spoke of had had her in his arms ... and perhaps
it was really all she remembered!

She had lied to him--lied to him from the first ... there hadn't been
a moment when she hadn't lied to him, deliberately, ingeniously and
inventively. As he thought of it, there came to him, for the first time
in months, that overwhelming sense of her physical nearness which had
once so haunted and tortured him. Her freshness, her fragrance, the
luminous haze of her youth, filled the room with a mocking glory; and he
dropped his head on his hands to shut it out....

The vision was swept away by another wave of hurrying thoughts. He felt
it was intensely important that he should keep the thread of every one
of them, that they all represented things to be said or done, or guarded
against; and his mind, with the unwondering versatility and tireless
haste of the dreamer's brain, seemed to be pursuing them all
simultaneously. Then they became as unreal and meaningless as the red
specks dancing behind the lids against which he had pressed his fists
clenched, and he had the feeling that if he opened his eyes they would
vanish, and the familiar daylight look in on him....

A knock disturbed him. The old parlour-maid who was always left in
charge of the house had come up to ask if he wasn't well, and if there
was anything she could do for him. He told her no ... he was perfectly
well ... or, rather, no, he wasn't ... he supposed it must be the heat;
and he began to scold her for having forgotten to close the shutters.

It wasn't her fault, it appeared, but Eliza's: her tone implied that he
knew what one had to expect of Eliza ... and wouldn't he go down to the
nice cool shady dining-room, and let her make him an iced drink and a
few sandwiches?

"I've always told Mrs. Marvell I couldn't turn my back for a second
but what Eliza'd find a way to make trouble," the old woman continued,
evidently glad of the chance to air a perennial grievance. "It's not
only the things she FORGETS to do," she added significantly; and it
dawned on Ralph that she was making an appeal to him, expecting him to
take sides with her in the chronic conflict between herself and Eliza.
He said to himself that perhaps she was right ... that perhaps there was
something he ought to do ... that his mother was old, and didn't always
see things; and for a while his mind revolved this problem with feverish
intensity....

"Then you'll come down, sir?"

"Yes."