"What wouldn"t she understand?" All his kindness had gone. He was once more the cold inaccessible creature I had seen that first day stalking up to Big Klaus"s door.
"What I mean is," I explained, quite miserably crestfallen, "my mother wouldn"t understand what I feel about studying medicine. But _you_"--and I had a struggle to keep the tears back--"I"ve looked forward so to telling you----"
He turned the papers over with an odd misliking expression.
"For one thing, you could never pa.s.s the entrance examination," he said.
I asked why he thought that.
"Do you see yourself going to cla.s.ses in London, cramming yourself with all this?"--his hand swept the qualifications list.
"Not cla.s.ses in London," I said. "But people do the London Matriculation without that. I am taking the University Tutorial Correspondence Course," I said.
I was swallowing tears as I boasted myself already rather good at Botany and French. My mother thought even my German tolerable.
I picked up the little pamphlet issued by the University of London on the subject of Matriculation Regulations, and I pointed out Section III., "Provincial Examinations." The January and June Matriculation Examinations were held at the Brighton Munic.i.p.al Technical College. He could see that made it all quite convenient and easy.
"I can see it is all quite mad," he answered. "Suppose by some miracle you were to pa.s.s the entrance exams.--have you any idea how long they keep you grinding away afterwards?"
"Five to seven years," I said.
"Well! Can"t you see what a wild idea it is?"
I said to myself: he knows about our straitened means. "You mean it costs such a great deal."
"It costs a great deal more than you think," he said, shifting about discontentedly in his chair.
Then I told him that my mother had some jewels. "I am sure that when she sees I am in earnest, when I have got my B. A., she will be willing I should use the jewels----"
"It"s a dog"s life," he said, "for a woman."
I gathered my precious papers together. "You think I shall mind the hard work. But I shan"t."
"It isn"t the hard work," he said, "though it"s not easy for a man. For a woman----" he left the woman medical-student hanging over the abyss.
For all my questions I could not bring him to the point of saying what these bugbears were.
He was plainly tired of the subject.
My first disappointment had yielded to a spiritless catechism of how this and how that.
My persistent canva.s.s of the matter brought him nearer a manifestation of ill-temper than I had ever seen in him.
There was a great deal, he said, that he couldn"t talk about to a girl of eighteen. But had I or anybody else ever heard of a man who was a doctor himself wanting his sister, or his daughter to study medicine? He had never known one. _Not one._
I confessed I couldn"t think why that was, except that n.o.body belonging to a girl ever wanted her to do anything, except--I stopped short and then hurried on.... "But after all, you know that women do go through the medical schools and come out all right."
He shook his head. "They"ve lost something. Though I admit most of the women you mean, never had the thing I mean."
I said I didn"t understand.
"Well, you ought to. You"ve got it." He looked at me with an odd expression and asked how long I"d had this notion in my head. I said a year. "All this time! You"ve been full of this ever since I was here last!"
I lied. I said I had thought of absolutely nothing else all that time.
He stood up ... but I still sat there wondering what had made me tell him that lie.
"You won"t go," I said, "without seeing my mother."
To-day--he hadn"t time.
I went down with him as usual to the front door, weeping inwardly, yet hoping, praying, that before the door closed he would say something that would help--something kind.
He often said the best things of all just as he was going--as though he had not dared to be half so interesting, or a tenth so kind, but in the very act of making his escape.
To-day he put on his covert coat in a moody silence. Still silent, he took his hat.
I stood with the door-k.n.o.b in my hand. "You think, then, even if Aunt Josephine helped----"
"Who is Aunt Josephine?"
"My father"s step-sister. She is well off."
Aunt Josephine"s riches made no impression upon him. He was going away a different man from the one who had come in and pushed away my papers, to sit beside me and to take my hand. He pulled his stick out of the umbrella-stand.
"You feel sure I couldn"t?" I pleaded at the door.
"I feel sure you could do something better."
He was out on the step. "Good-bye," he said, with the look that hurt me, so tired--disappointed.
He had come for peace--for my mother"s tranquil spirit to bring rest to his tired mind. And all he had found here was my mother"s daughter fretting to be out in the fray! I had not even listened. I had interrupted and pulled away my hand.
After I shut the door, I opened it again, and called out: "Oh, what was it you were going to tell me?"
"It wouldn"t interest you," he said, without even turning round.
CHAPTER XVI
THE YACHTING PARTY
I had to make use of Eric"s old plea, "pressure of work," to account for his going away without seeing my mother.
I watched the clock that next afternoon in a state of fever. Would he come again at three, so that we might talk alone? No. The torturing minute-hand felt its way slowly round the clock-face, its finger, like a surgeon"s on my heart, pressing steadily, for all my flinching, to verify the seat and the extent of pain.
Four o"clock. Five. Half-past. No hope now of his coming, I told myself, as those do who cannot give up hope.