The dressing-bell clanged from the belfry. Robert left them to finish a
discussion that he found embarrassing.
"I said I'd try to be a mother to her. I _have_ tried, John; but the
little thing won't let me."
"Don't try too hard. Robert's right. Don't--don't be a mother to her."
"What am I to be?"
"Oh, anything you like. A presence. A heavenly apparition. An impossible
ideal. Anything but that."
"Do you think she's going to hold out for ever?"
"Only against that. As long as she remembers. It puts her off."
"She doesn't object to Robert being a father to her."
"No. Because he's a better father than I am; and she knows it."
Adeline flushed. She understood the implication and was hurt,
unreasonably. He saw her unreasonableness and her pain.
"My dear Adeline, Anne's mother will always be Anne's mother. I was
never anywhere beside Alice. I've had to choose between the Government
of India and my daughter. You'll observe that I don't try to be a father
to Anne; and that, in consequence, Anne likes me. But she'll _love_
Robert."
"And 'like' me? If I don't try."
"Give her time. Give her time."
He rose, smiling down at her.
"You think I'm unreasonable?"
"The least bit in the world. For the moment."
"My dear John, if I didn't love your little girl I wouldn't care."
"Love her. Love her. She'll love you too, in her rum way. She's fighting
you now. She wouldn't fight if she didn't feel she was beaten. Nobody
could hold out against you long."
She looked at the clock.
"Heavens! I must go and dress."
She thought: "_He_ didn't hold out against me, poor dear, five minutes.
I suppose he'll always remember that I jilted him for Robert."
And now he wanted her to see that if Anne's mother would be always
Anne's mother, his wife would be always his wife. Was he desperately
faithful, too? Always?
How could he have been? It was characteristic of Alice Severn that when
she had to choose between her husband and her daughter she had chosen
Anne. It was characteristic of John that when he had to choose between
his wife and his Government, he had not chosen Alice. He must have had
adventures out in India, conducted with the discretion becoming in a
Commissioner and a Member of the Legislative Council, but adventures.
Perhaps he was going back to one of them.