Confessions of a Well-Meaning Woman
him to drink between meals, I said nothing when he helped himself to brandy. He needed it. . .
“Son of mine, we must rally,” I said. “She must see, after this—”
“I shall go off my head if this goes on any longer,” he said.
Utterly unnerved. . .
I had thought it better to send Arthur off to his club for dinner. To my mind, it is inconceivable that a father should be jealous of his own son, but I can think of no other way to explain my husband’s persistent attitude of disparagement whenever a united front is most necessary. “A policy of pin-pricks” was the phrase that my boy once coined for it. We are, I hope, a devoted family, but Arthur seems never to lose an opportunity of indulging in a sneer. . . Yet I wish we had had him with us that night. In a crisis I am only too well aware that I am always left to find a way out, but that night I felt hardly adequate even to ordinary conversation; and, when this Sir Appleton began to shew the cloven hoof, I knew that only a man could deal with him.
We were taken utterly off our guard. He came into the room, shook hands with me, bowed to Will, waited until Norden was out of the room and then said:
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