“I know, mother, I know. I don’t know what it was.”
He could not make clear to her, if she was unable to appreciate through her intuition, his distaste for this harping on his marriage, this inevitable event to which he had to come, the fate that he could in no way avoid.
“Really, dear,” his mother went on, “I couldn’t understand it. You haven’t had any row with April, have you?”
It was no good trying to explain to her. Could anyone ever communicate their grief, or their happiness for that matter, to another? Was it not the fate of every human soul to be shut away from sympathy behind the wall he himself throws up for his defense?
“And, dear, while we’re on the question,” his mother was saying, “both father and I have been thinking that--well, dear, you’ve been spending rather a lot of money lately, and we thought that, though you have such a certain post, you really ought to take the opportunity of putting by a little money for setting up your house later on. Don’t you think so, dear?”
“You see you’ve got practically no expenses now. I know you pay us something every week, and it’s very good of you to, but you could quite easily save fifty pounds a year.”
She rose from her chair, walked across to him, and, bending down, kissed his forehead.
“We do feel for you, dear,” she said, “really we do.”
For a long while after she had left him Roland remained in the drawing-room; he was burdened by a confused reaction against the influences that were shaping his future for him. He supposed he was in love with April, that one day he would marry her; but was there any need for this insistence upon domesticity? Could he not be free a little longer? His eyes traveled miserably round the small, insignificant drawing-room. The window curtains had long since yielded their fresh color to the sunshine and hung dingily in the gaslight. The wall paper was shabby and tawdry, with its festooned roses. The carpet near the door was threadbare; the coverings to the stiff-backed chairs were dull and crinkly. This was what marriage meant to men and women in his position. He contrasted the narrow room with the comfort and repose of Hogstead. What chance did people stand whose lives were circumscribed by endless financial difficulties, who could not afford to surround themselves with deep arm-chairs and heavy carpets and warm-colored wall papers? It was cruel that now, at the very moment when he had begun to escape from the drab environment of his childhood, these fetters should be attached to him. It was cruel. And rising from his chair he walked backwards and forwards, up and down the room. The days of his freedom were already numbered. They would be soon ended, the days of irresponsible, unreflecting action. It was maddening, this semblance of liberty where there was no liberty. He recalled a simile in a novel he had once read, though the name of the book and of the author had escaped his memory, in which human beings were described as fishes swimming in clear water, with the net of the fisherman about them. He was like that. He was swimming in clear water, but at any moment the fisherman might lift the net and he would be gasping and quivering on the bank.