The defence that she did not really want to see him, that his presence
might bring on some bad attack, might excite her, was no real defence. He
had postponed an interview with her from day to day because he realised
that that interview would strike into flame all the slumbering relations
that that household held. It would fling them all, as though from a
preconcerted signal, into war....
But now there could be only one thought in his mind. He must see his
mother--if he could still help her he must be at her service. There was no
one whom he could ask about her. Mrs. Trussit now never spoke to him (and
indeed never spoke to any one if she could help it), and went up and down
the stairs in her rustling black and flat white face and jingling keys as
though she was no human being at all but only a walking automaton that you
wound up in the morning and put away in the cupboard at night--Mrs. Trussit
was of no use.
There remained Stephen, and this decided Peter to break through that
barrier that there was between them and to find out why it had ever
existed. He had not seen Stephen that summer at all--no one saw
Stephen--only at The Bending Mule they shook their heads over him and spoke
of the wild devil that had come upon him because the woman he loved was
being tortured to death by her husband only a mile away. He was drinking,
they said, and his farm was going to ruin, and he would speak to
nobody--and they shook their heads.
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