Zuleika Dobson; Or, An Oxford Love Story

Katie had shut her eyes, and clenched her hands. “He hated her. He told me so,” she said. “I was always a mother to him,” sobbed Mrs. Batch, rocking to and fro on a chair in a corner. “Why didn’t he come to me in his trouble?” “He kissed me,” said Katie, as in a trance. “No other man shall ever do that.” “He did?” exclaimed Clarence. “And you let him?” “You wretched little whipper-snapper!” flashed Katie. “Oh, I am, am I?” shouted Clarence, squaring up to his sister. “Say that again, will you?” There is no doubt that Katie would have said it again, had not her mother closed the scene with a prolonged wail of censure. “You ought to be thinking of ME, you wicked girl,” said Mrs. Batch. Katie went across, and laid a gentle hand on her mother’s shoulder. This, however, did but evoke a fresh flood of tears. Mrs. Batch had a keen sense of the deportment owed to tragedy. Katie, by bickering with Clarence, had thrown away the advantage she had gained by fainting. Mrs. Batch was not going to let her retrieve it by shining as a consoler. I hasten to add that this resolve was only sub-conscious in the good woman. Her grief was perfectly sincere. And it was not the less so because with it was mingled a certain joy in the greatness of the calamity. She came of good sound peasant stock. Abiding in her was the spirit of those old songs and ballads in which daisies and daffodillies and lovers’ vows and smiles are so strangely inwoven with tombs and ghosts, with murders and all manner of grim things. She had not had education enough to spoil her nerve. She was able to take the rough with the smooth. She was able to take all life for her province, and death too.