his white suit, and his lips and his eyes were deceitful and
satisfied, as they always were when he had been with Mariquita de Rojas.
That did not arouse any moral feeling in her, because she did not think
of Richard's actions as being good or bad, but only as being different
in colour and lustre, like the various kinds of jewels; there are
pearls, and there are emeralds. But it made her feel lonely, and she
turned soberly to opening her letter. It was from Roger. He was in
trouble; he had been out of a job for some months; his savings were
gone, and the woman was bothering for her rent; he asked for help. At
first she did not think that she would tell Richard, but recognising
that that was a subtle form of disloyalty to Roger, she said evenly:
"Richard, how can I cable money to Roger? He wants it quickly. And,
Richard, I think I should go home and look after him." Richard had set
his eyes on the far heat-throbbing seas and, after a moment's quivering
silence, had broken into curses. "Oh, don't speak of poor Roger like
that!" she had cried out, and he had answered terribly: "I'm not
speaking of him; I'm speaking of my father, who let you in for all
this." She had muttered protestingly, but because of the hatred in his
face she was not brave enough to tell him that she had made her peace
with his father before he died. Not even for Harry's sake would she
imperil the love between her and her son.
She had gone home a few months later, but, of course, it had been
useless. Roger would never come back to live with her. All she could do
was to sit at Yaverland's End, ready to receive him when he turned up,
as he always did when he had got a new post, to boast of how well he was
going to do in the future. Usually on these occasions he brought her a
present, something queer that wrung the heart because it revealed the
humility of his conception of the desirable; perhaps a glass jar of
preserved fruit salad which had evidently impressed him as looking
magnificent when he saw it in the grocer's shop. She would kiss him
gratefully for it, though every time he came back he was more like the
grey and hopeless men, cousins to the rats, who hang round cab-ranks in
cities.
A regular routine followed these visits. First he wrote happy letters
home every Sunday; then he ceased to write so often; then there was
silence; and then he wrote asking for help, because he had lost his job
and owed money to the landlady. Then she would seek him
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