III

The holiday in the Isle of Man was of course ruined for her.  She could scarcely walk because of the weight of a lump of lead that she carried in her bosom.  On the brightest days the lump of lead was always there.  Besides, she was so obese.  In ordinary circumstances they might have stayed beyond the month.  An indentured pupil is not strapped to the wheel like a common apprentice.  Moreover, the indentures were to be cancelled.  But Constance did not care to stay.  She had to prepare for his departure to London.  She had to lay the faggots for her own martyrdom.

In this business of preparation she showed as much silliness, she betrayed as perfect a lack of perspective, as the most superior son could desire for a topic of affectionate irony.  Her preoccupation with petty things of no importance whatever was worthy of the finest traditions of fond motherhood.  However, Cyril’s careless satire had no effect on her, save that once she got angry, thereby startling him; he quite correctly and sagely laid this unprecedented outburst to the account of her wrought nerves, and forgave it.  Happily for the smoothness of Cyril’s translation to London, young Peel-Swynnerton was acquainted with the capital, had a brother in Chelsea, knew of reputable lodgings, was, indeed, an encyclopaedia of the town, and would himself spend a portion of the autumn there.  Otherwise, the preliminaries which his mother would have insisted on by means of tears and hysteria might have proved fatiguing to Cyril.

The day came when on that day week Cyril would be gone.  Constance steadily fabricated cheerfulness against the prospect.  She said: 

“Suppose I come with you?”

He smiled in toleration of this joke as being a passable quality of joke.  And then she smiled in the same sense, hastening to agree with him that as a joke it was not a bad joke.

In the last week he was very loyal to his tailor.  Many a young man would have commanded new clothes after, not before, his arrival in London.  But Cyril had faith in his creator.

On the day of departure the household, the very house itself, was in a state of excitation.  He was to leave early.  He would not listen to the project of her accompanying him as far as Knype, where the Loop Line joined the main.  She might go to Bursley Station and no further.  When she rebelled he disclosed the merest hint of his sullen-churlish side, and she at once yielded.  During breakfast she did not cry, but the aspect of her face made him protest.

“Now, look here, mater!  Just try to remember that I shall be back for Christmas.  It’s barely three months.”  And he lit a cigarette.

She made no reply.

Amy lugged a Gladstone bag down the crooked stairs.  A trunk was already close to the door; it had wrinkled the carpet and deranged the mat.

“You didn’t forget to put the hair-brush in, did you, Amy?” he asked.