If
they were hungry they rifled Francey's larder, and if they were hard up
they borrowed her money. But after the one time Robert never went. He
did not want to meet them. And besides the big square room with its
mark of other stately days--its panelled walls, rich ceilings and noble
doors--was his enemy. It was steeped in a mellow, unconscious luxury
that threatened him. There were relics from Francey's old home,
trophies from her Italian wanderings, books that his hands itched just
to touch, and things of strange troubling beauty. A bronze statue of a
naked faun stood in the corner where the light fell upon it, and seemed
to gather into itself everything that he feared--a joyous dancing to
some far-off music.
The room would not let him forget that Francey held money, which he had
had to squeeze his life dry to get, lightly and indifferently. She
gave it with both hands. She had always had enough, and it seemed to
her a little thing. Between people who cared for one another it
counted less than a word, and his sullen refusal of every trivial
pleasure and relief that lay in her power to give them hurt and puzzled
her. She saw in it only a bitter pride.
"You might at least let me make Christine's life easier in little
things," she said.
He could not tell her that Christine would have been afraid for him, as
he was afraid of the deep chairs that had seemed to clasp his tired
body in drowsy arms, of the rugs that drank up every harsh sound, of
the warm, fragrant atmosphere that was like a blow in the face of their
chill and barren poverty.
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