Page 53 - swanns-way

moment; then my father said: ‘Well, shall we go up to bed?’
‘As you wish, dear, though I don’t feel in the least like
sleeping. I don’t know why; it can’t be the coffee-ice—it
wasn’t strong enough to keep me awake like this. But I see
a light in the servants’ hall: poor Françoise has been sitting
up for me, so I will get her to unhook me while you go and
undress.’
My mother opened the latticed door which led from the
hall to the staircase. Presently I heard her coming upstairs
to close her window. I went quietly into the passage; my
heart was beating so violently that I could hardly move, but
at least it was throbbing no longer with anxiety, but with
terror and with joy. I saw in the well of the stair a light com-
ing upwards, from Mamma’s candle. Then I saw Mamma
herself: I threw myself upon her. For an instant she looked
at me in astonishment, not realising what could have hap-
pened. Then her face assumed an expression of anger. She
said not a single word to me; and, for that matter, I used to
go for days on end without being spoken to, for far less of-
fences than this. A single word from Mamma would have
been an admission that further intercourse with me was
within the bounds of possibility, and that might perhaps
have appeared to me more terrible still, as indicating that,
with such a punishment as was in store for me, mere silence,
and even anger, were relatively puerile.
A word from her then would have implied the false calm
in which one converses with a servant to whom one has just
decided to give notice; the kiss one bestows on a son who is
being packed off to enlist, which would have been denied

53