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your own.'
He took her hand and they walked on together in silence, pulling their sledges
after them.
Spandrell turned away from the window. The kettle was boiling. He filled the tea-
pot, poured himself out a cup and drank. Symbolically enough, his thirst remained
unassuaged. He went on sipping, meditatively, remembering and analysing those quite
incredible felicities of his boyhood. Winters among the Dolomites. Springs in Tuscany or
Provence or Bavaria, summers by the Mediterranean or in Savoy. After his father's death
and before he went to school, they lived almost continuously abroad--it was cheaper. And
almost all his holidays from school were spent out of England. From seven to fifteen, he
had moved from one European beauty spot to another, appreciating their beauty, what
was more--genuinely, a precocious Childe Harold. England seemed a little tame
afterwards. He thought of another day in winter. Not misty, this time, but brilliant; the
sun hot in a cloudless sky; the coral precipices of the Dolomites shining pink and orange
and white above the woods and the snow slopes. They were sliding down on skis through
the bare larchwoods. Streaked with tree-shadows, the snow was like an immense white
and blue tiger-skin beneath their feet. The sunlight was orange among the leafless twigs,
sea-green in the hanging beards of moss. The powdery snow sizzled under their skis, the
air was at once warm and eager. And when he emerged from the woods the great rolling
slopes lay before him like the contours of a wonderful body, and the virgin snow was a
smooth skin, delicately grained in the low afternoon sunlight, and twinkling with
diamonds and spangles. He had gone ahead. At the outskirts of the wood he halted to wait
for his mother. Looking back he watched her coming through the trees. A strong tall
figure, still young and agile, the young face puckered into a smile. Down she came
towards him, and she was the most beautiful and at the same time the most homely and
comforting and familiar of beings. 'Well!' she said, laughing, as she drew up beside him
'Well!' He looked at her and then at the snow and the tree-shadows and the great
bare rocks and the blue sky, then back again at his mother. And all at once he was filled
with an intense, inexplicable happiness.
'I shall never be so happy as this again,' he said to himself, when they set off once
more. 'Never again, even though I live to be a hundred.' He was only fifteen at the time,
but that was how he felt and thought.
And his words had been prophetic. That was the last of his happinesses.
Afterwards...No, no. He preferred not to think of afterwards. Not at the moment. He
poured himself out another cup of tea.
A bell rang startlingly. He went to the door of the flat and opened it. It was his
mother.
'You?' Then he suddenly remembered that Lucy had said something.
'Didn't you get my message?' Mrs. Knoyle asked anxiously.
'Yes. But I'd clean forgotten.'
'But I thought you needed...' she began. She was afraid she might have intruded;
his face was so unwelcoming.
The corners of his mouth ironically twitched. 'I do need,' he said. He was
chronically penniless.
They passed into the other room. The windows, Mrs. Knoyle observed at a
glance, were foggy with grime. On shelf and mantel the dust lay thick. Sooty cobwebs
dangled from the ceiling. She had tried to get Maurice's permission to send a woman to
clean up two or three times a week. But, 'None of your slumming,' he had said. 'I prefer to
wallow. Filth's my natural element. Besides, I haven't a distinguished military position to
keep up.' He laughed, noiselessly, showing his big strong teeth. That was for her. She
never dared to repeat her offer. But the room really did need cleaning.
'Would you like some tea? ' he asked. 'It's ready. I'm just having breakfast,' he
added, purposely drawing attention to the irregularity of his way of life.
She refused, without venturing any comment on the unusual breakfast hour.
Spandrell was rather disappointed that he had not succeeded in drawing her. There was a
long silence.
From time to time Mrs. Knoyle glanced almost surreptitiously at her son. He was
staring fixedly into the empty fireplace. He looked old, she thought, and rather ill and
dreadfully uncared for. She tried to recognize the child, the big schoolboy he had been in
those far-off times when they were happy, just the two of them together. She remembered
how distressed he used to be when she didn't wear what he thought were the right clothes,
when she wasn't smart or failed to look her best. He was as jealously proud of her as she
was of him. But the responsibility of his upbringing weighed on her heavily. The future
had always frightened her; she had always been afraid of taking decisions; she had no
trust in her own powers. Besides, after her husband's death, there wasn't much money;
and she had no head for affairs, no talent for management. How to afford to send him to
the university, how to get him started in life? The questions tormented her. She lay awake
at night, wondering what she 6ught to do. Life terrified her. She had a child's capacity for
happiness, but also a child's fears, a child's inefficiency. When existence was a holiday,
none could be more rapturously happy; but when there was business to be done, plans to
be made, decisions taken, she was simply lost and terrified. And to make matters worse,
after Maurice went to school she was very lonely. He was with her only in the holidays.
For nine months out of the twelve she was alone, with nobody to love but her old
dachshund. And at last even he failed her-fell ill, poor old beast, and had to be put out of
his misery. It was shortly after poor old Fritz's death that she first met Major Knoyle, as
he then was.
'You say you brought that money?' Spandrell asked, breaking the long silence.
Mrs. Knoyle flushed. 'Yes, it's here,' she said and opened her bag. The moment to
speak had come. It was her duty to admonish, and the wad of bank notes gave her the
right, the power. But the duty was odious and she had no wish to use her power. She
raised her eyes and looked at him imploringly. 'Maurice,' she begged, 'why can't you be
reasonable? It's such a madness, such a folly.'
Spandrell raised his eyebrows. 'What's a madness?' he asked, pretending not to
know what she was talking about.
Embarrassed at being thus compelled to specify her vague reproaches, Mrs.
Knoyle blushed. 'You know what I mean,' she said. 'This way of living. It's bad and
stupid. And such a waste, such a suicide. Besides, you're not happy; I can see that.'
'Mayn't I even be unhappy, if I want to?' he asked ironically.
'But do you want to make me unhappy too? ' she asked. 'Because if you do, you
succeed, Maurice; you succeed. You make me terribly unhappy.' The tears came into her
eyes. She felt in her bag for a handkerchief.
Spandrell got up from his chair and began to walk up and down the room. 'You
didn't think much of my happiness in the past,' he said.
His mother did not answer, but went on noiselessly crying.
'When you married that man,' he went on, 'did you think of my happiness?'
'You know I thought it would be for the best,' she answered brokenly. She had
explained it so often; she couldn't begin again. 'You know it,' she repeated.
'I only know what I felt and said at the time,' he answered. 'You didn't listen to
me, and now you tell me you wanted to make me happy.'
'But you were so unreasonable,' she protested. 'If you had given me any reasons...'
'Reasons,' he repeated slowly. 'Did you honestly expect a boy of fifteen to tell his
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