The Baroness and Lawrence had the long slow meal together. It was almost more than Jerry could stand having, of course, his own private tortures to face. "It was as though the old lady felt that she had been deputed to support the honour of the family during her husband's absence. She must have been wild with anxiety, but she showed no sign except that her hand trembled when she raised her glass."
"Oh, about anything! Theatres and her home, when she was a girl and England.... Awful, every minute of it!"
There was a moment towards the end of the meal, when the good lady nearly broke down. The bell in the hall rang and there was a step; she thought it was her husband and half rose. It was, however, the Dvornik with a message of no importance. She gave a little sigh. "Oh, I do wish he would come!... I do wish he would come!" she murmured to herself.
"Oh, he'll come," Lawrence reassured her, but she seemed indignant with him for having overheard her. Afterwards, sitting together desolately in the magnificent drawing-room, she became affectionately maternal. I have always wondered why Lawrence confided to me the details of their very intimate conversation. It was exactly the kind of thing he was most reticent about.
She asked him about his home, his people, his ambitions. She had asked him about these things before, but to-night there was an appeal in her questions, as though she said:
"Take my mind off that other thing. Help me to forget, if it's only for a moment."
She hoped that he would be happy. He told her that he didn't think happiness was quite the point in this particular case. There were other things more important--and, anyway, it was inevitable.
She sighed. So had she. It was, she thought, the only real way. She asked him whether it might not, after all, turn out better than he expected.
No, he did not think that it could. But he didn't mind how it turned out--at least he couldn't look that far. The point was that he was in it, up to the neck, and he was never going to be out of it again.
There was something boyish about that that pleased her. She put her plump hand on his knee and told him how she had first met the Baron, down in the South, at Kieff, how grand he had looked; how, seeing her across a room full of people, he had smiled at her before he had ever spoken to her or knew her name. "I was quite pretty then," she added. "I have never regretted our marriage for a single moment," she said. "Nor, I know, has he."