But Roger was his especial pride and joy.
Being the eldest - the first. And I think Philip felt it. He drew back right into himself.
He began to like books and the past and things that were well divorced from everyday life.
I think he suffered - children do suffer -" She paused and went on: "What I really mean, I suppose, is that he's always been jealous of Roger.
I think perhaps he doesn't know it himself.
But I think the fact that Roger has come a cropper - oh, it seems an odious thing to say and really I'm sure he doesn't realise it himself - but I think perhaps Philip isn't as sorry about it as he ought to be."
"You mean really that he's rather pleased Roger has made a fool of himself."
"Yes," said Miss de Haviland. "I mean just exactly that." She added, frowning a little: "It distressed me, you know, that he didn't at once offer help to his brother."
"Why should he?" I said.
"After all, Roger has made a muck of things.
He's a grown man.
There are no children to consider.
If he were ill or in real want, of course his family would help - but I've no doubt Roger would really much prefer to start afresh entirely on his own."
"Oh! he would.
It's only Clemency he minds about.
And Clemency is an extraordinary creature.
She really likes being uncomfortable and having only one utility teacup to drink out of. Modern, I suppose.
She's no sense of the past, no sense of beauty."
I felt her shrewd eyes looking me up and down.
"This is a dreadful ordeal for Sophia," she said. "I am so sorry her youth should be dimmed by it.
I love them all, you know. Roger and Philip, and now Sophia and Eustace and Josephine.
All the dear children.
Marcia's children.
Yes, I love them dearly." She paused and then added sharply: "But, mind you, this side idolatry."
She turned abruptly and went.
I had the feeling that she had meant something by her last remark that I did not quite understand.
Chapter 15
"Your room's ready," said Sophia.
She stood by my side looking out at the garden.
It looked bleak and grey now with the half denuded trees swaying in the wind.
Sophia echoed my thought as she said:
"How desolate it looks..."
As we watched, a figure, and then presently another came through the yew hedge from the rock garden. They both looked grey and unsubstantial in the fading light.
Brenda Leonides was the first.
She was wrapped in a grey chinchilla coat and there was something catlike and stealthy in the way she moved.
She slipped through the twilight with a kind of eerie grace.
I saw her face as she passed the window. There was a half smile on it, the curving crooked smile I had noticed upstairs.
A few minutes later Laurence Brown, looking slender and shrunken, also slipped through the twilight.
I can only put it that way.
They did not seem like two people walking, two people who had been out for a stroll.
There was something furtive and unsubstantial about them like two ghosts.
I wondered if it was under Brenda's or Laurence's foot that a twig had snapped.
By a natural association of ideas, I asked: "Where's Josephine?"
"Probably with Eustace up in the schoolroom." She frowned. "I'm worried about Eustace, Charles."
"Why?"
"He's so moody and odd.
He's been so different ever since that wretched paralysis.
I can't make out what's going on in his mind.
Sometimes he seems to hate us all."
"He'll probably grow out of all that.