________________________________________________
_ On a hot day in August, just before they were to leave Bursley for
a month in the Isle of Man, Cyril came home, pale and perspiring,
and dropped on to the sofa. He wore a grey alpaca suit, and,
except his hair, which in addition to being very untidy was damp
with sweat, he was a masterpiece of slim elegance, despite the
heat. He blew out great sighs, and rested his head on the
antimacassared arm of the sofa.
"Well, mater," he said, in a voice of factitious calm, "I've got
it." He was looking up at the ceiling.
"Got what?"
"The National Scholarship. Swynnerton says it's a sheer fluke. But
I've got it. Great glory for the Bursley School of Art!"
"National Scholarship?" she said. "What's that? What is it?"
"Now, mother!" he admonished her, not without testiness. "Don't go
and say I've never breathed a word about it!"
He lit a cigarette, to cover his self-consciousness, for he
perceived that she was moved far beyond the ordinary.
Never, in fact, not even by the death of her husband, had she
received such a frightful blow as that which the dreamy Cyril had
just dealt her.
It was not a complete surprise, but it was nearly a complete
surprise. A few months previously he certainly had mentioned, in
his incidental way, the subject of a National Scholarship. Apropos
of a drinking-cup which he had designed, he had said that the
director of the School of Art had suggested that it was good
enough to compete for the National, and that as he was otherwise
qualified for the competition he might as well send the cup to
South Kensington. He had added that Peel-Swynnerton had laughed at
the notion as absurd. On that occasion she had comprehended that a
National Scholarship involved residence in London. She ought to
have begun to live in fear, for Cyril had a most disturbing habit
of making a mere momentary reference to matters which he deemed
very important and which occupied a large share of his attention.
He was secretive by nature, and the rigidity of his father's rule
had developed this trait in his character. But really he had
spoken of the competition with such an extreme casualness that
with little effort she had dismissed it from her anxieties as
involving a contingency so remote as to be negligible. She had,
genuinely, almost forgotten it. Only at rare intervals had it
wakened in her a dull transitory pain--like the herald of a fatal
malady. And, as a woman in the opening stage of disease, she had
hastily reassured herself: "How silly of me! This can't possibly
be anything serious!"
And now she was condemned. She knew it. She knew there could be no
appeal. She knew that she might as usefully have besought mercy
from a tiger as from her good, industrious, dreamy son.
"It means a pound a week," said Cyril, his self-consciousness
intensified by her silence and by the dreadful look on her face.
"And of course free tuition."
"For how long?" she managed to say.
"Well," said he, "that depends. Nominally for a year. But if you
behave yourself it's always continued for three years." If he
stayed for three years he would never come back: that was a
certainty.
How she rebelled, furious and despairing, against the fortuitous
cruelty of things! She was sure that he had not, till then,
thought seriously of going to London. But the fact that the
Government would admit him free to its classrooms and give him a
pound a week besides, somehow forced him to go to London. It was
not the lack of means that would have prevented him from going.
Why, then, should the presence of means induce him to go? There
was no logical reason. The whole affair was disastrously absurd.
The art-master at the Wedgwood Institution had chanced, merely
chanced, to suggest that the drinking-cup should be sent to South
Kensington. And the result of this caprice was that she was
sentenced to solitude for life! It was too monstrously, too
incredibly wicked!
With what futile and bitter execration she murmured in her heart
the word 'If.' If Cyril's childish predilections had not been
encouraged! If he had only been content to follow his father's
trade! If she had flatly refused to sign his indenture at Peel's
and pay the premium! If he had not turned from, colour to clay! If
the art-master had not had that fatal 'idea'! If the judges for
the competition had decided otherwise! If only she had brought
Cyril up in habits of obedience, sacrificing temporary peace to
permanent security!
For after all he could not abandon her without her consent. He was
not of age. And he would want a lot more money, which he could
obtain from none but her. She could refuse. ...
No! She could not refuse. He was the master, the tyrant. For the
sake of daily pleasantness she had weakly yielded to him at the
start! She had behaved badly to herself and to him. He was
spoiled. She had spoiled him. And he was about to repay her with
lifelong misery, and nothing would deflect him from his course.
The usual conduct of the spoilt child! Had she not witnessed it,
and moralized upon it, in other families?
"You don't seem very chirpy over it, mater!" he said.
She went out of the room. His joy in the prospect of departure
from the Five Towns, from her, though he masked it, was more
manifest than she could bear.
The Signal, the next day, made a special item of the news. It
appeared that no National Scholarship had been won in the Five
Towns for eleven years. The citizens were exhorted to remember
that Mr. Povey had gained his success in open competition with the
cleverest young students of the entire kingdom--and in a branch of
art which he had but recently taken up; and further, that the
Government offered only eight scholarships each year. The name of
Cyril Povey passed from lip to lip. And nobody who met Constance,
in street or shop, could refrain from informing her that she ought
to be a proud mother, to have such a son, but that truly they were
not surprised ... and how proud his poor father would have been! A
few sympathetically hinted that maternal pride was one of those
luxuries that may cost too dear. _
Read next: BOOK II CONSTANCE: CHAPTER VIII - THE PROUDEST MOTHER: PART III
Read previous: BOOK II CONSTANCE: CHAPTER VIII - THE PROUDEST MOTHER: PART I
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