A concession only led her on
to speak the thoughts it naturally suggested to her. And her very
bitterness was an outcome of her affection; it soothed her to rail
at her son after so long a silence. He had injured her by his
holding aloof; she was urged on by this feeling quite as much as by
anger with his faults. And still Mutimer showed no resentment. In
him, too, there was a pleasure which came of memories revived. Let
her say to him what she liked, he loved his mother and was glad to
be once more in her presence.
'I wish I could have pleased you better, mother,' he said. 'What's
done can't be helped. We've trouble to bear together, and it won't
be lighter for angry words.'
The old woman muttered something inaudible and, after feeling her
iron and discovering that it was cold, she put it down before the
fire. Her tongue had eased itself, and she fell again into silent
grief.
Mutimer sat listening to the tick of the familiar clock. That and
the smell of the fresh linen made his old life very present to him;
there arose in his heart a longing for the past, it seemed peaceful
and fuller of genuine interests than the life he now led. He
remembered how he used to sit before the kitchen fire reading the
books and papers which stirred his thought to criticism of the order
of things; nothing now absorbed him in the same way.
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