Yet out of their talk he began to form vague ideas of the home from
which she came. There was, of course, no servant, and the mother was
something meandering, furtive, tearful in the face of troubles.
Sometimes of an afternoon or evening she grew garrulous. "Mother does
talk so--sometimes." She rarely went out of doors. Chaffery always
rose late, and would sometimes go away for days together. He was mean;
he allowed only a weekly twenty-five shillings for housekeeping, and
sometimes things grew unsatisfactory at the week-end. There seemed to
be little sympathy between mother and daughter; the widow had been
flighty in a dingy fashion, and her marriage with her chief lodger
Chaffery had led to unforgettable sayings. It was to facilitate this
marriage that Ethel had been sent to Whortley, so that was counted a
mitigated evil. But these were far-off things, remote and unreal down
the long, ill-lit vista of the suburban street which swallowed up
Ethel nightly. The walk, her warmth and light and motion close to him,
her clear little voice, and the touch of her hand; that was reality.
The shadow of Chaffery and his deceptions lay indeed across all these
things, sometimes faint, sometimes dark and present. Then Lewisham
became insistent, his sentimental memories ceased, and he asked
questions that verged on gulfs of doubt.
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