第20章

Pemberton suspected that the great, the cruel discomfiture had been the unspeakable behaviour of Mr.Granger, who seemed not to know what he wanted, or, what was much worse, what they wanted.He kept sending flowers, as if to bestrew the path of his retreat, which was never the path of a return.Flowers were all very well, but -Pemberton could complete the proposition.It was now positively conspicuous that in the long run the Moreens were a social failure;so that the young man was almost grateful the run had not been short.Mr.Moreen indeed was still occasionally able to get away on business and, what was more surprising, was likewise able to get back.Ulick had no club but you couldn't have discovered it from his appearance, which was as much as ever that of a person looking at life from the window of such an institution; therefore Pemberton was doubly surprised at an answer he once heard him make his mother in the desperate tone of a man familiar with the worst privations.

Her question Pemberton had not quite caught; it appeared to be an appeal for a suggestion as to whom they might get to take Amy.

"Let the Devil take her!" Ulick snapped; so that Pemberton could see that they had not only lost their amiability but had ceased to believe in themselves.He could also see that if Mrs.Moreen was trying to get people to take her children she might be regarded as closing the hatches for the storm.But Morgan would be the last she would part with.

One winter afternoon - it was a Sunday - he and the boy walked far together in the Bois de Boulogne.The evening was so splendid, the cold lemon-coloured sunset so clear, the stream of carriages and pedestrians so amusing and the fascination of Paris so great, that they stayed out later than usual and became aware that they should have to hurry home to arrive in time for dinner.They hurried accordingly, arm-in-arm, good-humoured and hungry, agreeing that there was nothing like Paris after all and that after everything too that had come and gone they were not yet sated with innocent pleasures.When they reached the hotel they found that, though scandalously late, they were in time for all the dinner they were likely to sit down to.Confusion reigned in the apartments of the Moreens - very shabby ones this time, but the best in the house -and before the interrupted service of the table, with objects displaced almost as if there had been a scuffle and a great wine-stain from an overturned bottle, Pemberton couldn't blink the fact that there had been a scene of the last proprietary firmness.The storm had come - they were all seeking refuge.The hatches were down, Paula and Amy were invisible - they had never tried the most casual art upon Pemberton, but he felt they had enough of an eye to him not to wish to meet him as young ladies whose frocks had been confiscated - and Ulick appeared to have jumped overboard.The host and his staff, in a word, had ceased to "go on" at the pace of their guests, and the air of embarrassed detention, thanks to a pile of gaping trunks in the passage, was strangely commingled with the air of indignant withdrawal.When Morgan took all this in -and he took it in very quickly - he coloured to the roots of his hair.He had walked from his infancy among difficulties and dangers, but he had never seen a public exposure.Pemberton noticed in a second glance at him that the tears had rushed into his eyes and that they were tears of a new and untasted bitterness.