Page 54 - swanns-way

him if it had merely been a matter of being angry with him
for a few days. But she heard my father coming from the
dressing-room, where he had gone to take off his clothes,
and, to avoid the ‘scene’ which he would make if he saw me,
she said, in a voice half-stifled by her anger: ‘Run away at
once. Don’t let your father see you standing there like a cra-
zy jane!’
But I begged her again to ‘Come and say good night
to me!’ terrified as I saw the light from my father’s candle
already creeping up the wall, but also making use of his ap-
proach as a means of blackmail, in the hope that my mother,
not wishing him to find me there, as find me he must if she
continued to hold out, would give in to me, and say: ‘Go
back to your room. I will come.’
Too late: my father was upon us. Instinctively I mur-
mured, though no one heard me, ‘I am done for!’
I was not, however. My father used constantly to re-
fuse to let me do things which were quite clearly allowed
by the more liberal charters granted me by my mother and
grandmother, because he paid no heed to ‘Principles,’ and
because in his sight there were no such things as ‘Rights of
Man.’ For some quite irrelevant reason, or for no reason at
all, he would at the last moment prevent me from taking
some particular walk, one so regular and so consecrated to
my use that to deprive me of it was a clear breach of faith;
or again, as he had done this evening, long before the ap-
pointed hour he would snap out: ‘Run along up to bed now;
no excuses!’ But then again, simply because he was devoid
of principles (in my grandmother’s sense), so he could not,

54 Swann’s Way