Page 56 - swanns-way

perished which, I imagined, would last for ever, and new
structures have arisen, giving birth to new sorrows and
new joys which in those days I could not have foreseen, just
as now the old are difficult of comprehension. It is a long
time, too, since my father has been able to tell Mamma to
‘Go with the child.’ Never again will such hours be possible
for me. But of late I have been increasingly able to catch, if
I listen attentively, the sound of the sobs which I had the
strength to control in my father’s presence, and which broke
out only when I found myself alone with Mamma. Actually,
their echo has never ceased: it is only because life is now
growing more and more quiet round about me that I hear
them afresh, like those convent bells which are so effectively
drowned during the day by the noises of the streets that one
would suppose them to have been stopped for ever, until
they sound out again through the silent evening air.
Mamma spent that night in my room: when I had just
committed a sin so deadly that I was waiting to be ban-
ished from the household, my parents gave me a far greater
concession than I should ever have won as the reward of
a good action. Even at the moment when it manifested it-
self in this crowning mercy, my father’s conduct towards me
was still somewhat arbitrary, and regardless of my deserts,
as was characteristic of him and due to the fact that his ac-
tions were generally dictated by chance expediencies rather
than based on any formal plan. And perhaps even what I
called his strictness, when he sent me off to bed, deserved
that title less, really, than my mother’s or grandmother’s at-
titude, for his nature, which in some respects differed more

56 Swann’s Way