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And above all there was Varden, who, to Rickie's bewilderment, was now a member of Dunwood House. "He had to go somewhere," said Agnes. "Lucky for his mother that we had a vacancy." "Yes but when I meet Mrs. Orr I can't help feeling ashamed." "Oh, Mrs. Orr! Who cares for her? Her teeth are drawn. If she chooses to insinuate that we planned it, let her. Hers was rank dishonesty.
But still, when the weather was fair, he liked to come up after bathing, and get dry in the sun. Today he brought with him a towel, a pipe of tobacco, and Rickie's story. He must get it done some time, and he was tired of the six-penny reprints. The sloping gable was warm, and he lay back on it with closed eyes, gasping for pleasure.
Weakly people, if they are not careful, hate one another, and when the weakness is hereditary the temptation increases. Elliots had never got on among themselves. They talked of "The Family," but they always turned outwards to the health and beauty that lie so promiscuously about the world. Rickie's father had turned, for a time at all events, to his mother. Rickie himself was turning to Agnes.
Rickie did not like the idea of being "worked in," but he was determined to raise no difficulties. It is so easy to be refined and high-minded when we have nothing to do. But the active, useful man cannot be equally particular. Rickie's programme involved a change in values as well as a change of occupation. "Adopt a frankly intellectual attitude," Mr. Pembroke continued.
The cook left; the boys had a disease called roseola; Agnes, who was still drunk with her engagement, was of no assistance, but kept flying up to London to push Rickie's fortunes; and, to crown everything, the matron was too bright and not motherly enough: she neglected the little boys and was overattentive to the big ones. She left abruptly, and the voice of Mrs.
He is one of the better sort of Rickie's Cambridge friends, and has been dreadfully grieved at the collapse, but he does not want to be mixed up in it. This autumn he was up in the Lowlands, close by, and very kindly made a few unobtrusive inquiries for me. The man is becoming an habitual drunkard." She smiled again.
Pembroke did not receive a clear account of what had happened when he returned for the interval. His sister he told her frankly was concealing something from him. She could make no reply. Had she gone mad, she wondered. Hitherto she had pretended to love her husband. Why choose such a moment for the truth? "But I understand Rickie's position," he told her.
She was anxious not to start with a blunder, and therefore did not talk to the young fellow, but tried to gather what he was from the demeanour of Rickie. "I am sure, Mrs. Failing, that you need not talk of 'making' people come to Cadover. There will be no difficulty, I should say." "Thank you, my dear. Do you know who once said those exact words to me?" "Who?" "Rickie's mother."
Over the door there hung a long photograph of a city with waterways, which Agnes, who had never been to Venice, took to be Venice, but which people who had been to Stockholm knew to be Stockholm. Rickie's mother, looking rather sweet, was standing on the mantelpiece.
"I suppose you're a friend of Rickie's?" Ansell was tempted to reply, "I don't know him at all." But it seemed no moment for the severer truths, so he said, "I knew him well at Cambridge, but I have seen very little of him since." "Is it true that his baby was lame?" "I believe so." His teeth closed on his pipe. Chapel was over.
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