And I have had to see Viola’s face while these things were happening.  Sometimes, when he was too outrageous, she would look up and smile with the queerest little half-frightened wonder, and I would be reminded of the time when Jimmy had jaundice and she asked me if I thought he would stay that funny yellow colour all his life?  It was as if she were asking me, Did I think he would keep on all his life doing these rather alarming things?  Sometimes he would catch himself doing them and say, “See me do that?  That’s because I’m agitated.”  Or, “There’s another aitch gone.  Collar it, somebody.”  Or, “I suppose that’s what Norah would call one of my sillysosms.”  Sometimes Viola would catch him at it and reprove him.  And then he would simply throw the responsibility on the poor old Registrar down in Hertfordshire.

I have heard him say to her with extreme sweetness and docility:  “My dear child, if I’d had a father and mother like yours I shouldn’t do these things.”  And I have heard him say almost with bitterness:  “Does that shock you?  Good Heavens, you should see my father!”

But he took good care she shouldn’t see him.  I used to think this wasn’t very nice of him.  But what can a man do in a case so desperate?  There were risks that even Jevons couldn’t take.  I used to think that he salved his conscience by making the Registrar an allowance that increased in proportion to his income and by going down into Hertfordshire regularly every three months to see him himself.  I used to think that Jimmy’s father must have admirable tact, because he never seemed to have inquired why Jimmy always came alone.  But Jimmy said it wasn’t tact.  It was pure haughtiness.  The old bird, he said, was as proud as a peacock with his tail up.  I used to think it wasn’t very nice of him to talk like that about his father.  And I used to think it wasn’t very nice of Viola never to go with Jimmy on his pilgrimages.

I was with them once when she was seeing him off at Euston, and I said to her, “Do you never go with him to see the poor old man?”

She turned to me. (I hadn’t seen her look stern and fiery before.)

“Wally,” she said, “I suppose it’s because you’re so good that you always think other people aren’t.  That poor old man was a perfect devil to Jimmy.  I don’t say that Jimmy always was an angel to him, but he’s been pretty decent, considering.  He’s told me things I couldn’t tell you; and there were things he couldn’t tell me.  He says he didn’t believe in God the Father when he was little, just because he wanted to believe in God.  He thought God couldn’t be anything so frightful as a father.

“That’s why he’s so awfully fond of Daddy.”

* * * * *

And so it went on.  She swung between slight shocks and passionate recoveries.  One minute Jimmy’s manners made her shudder all down her spine, and the next he would do some adorable thing that brought her to his feet.  Half the time she pretended that things hadn’t happened when they had.  And when her flesh crept she had memories that lashed it.