Mrs. Perch believed her son could do anything and,
in the matter of his capabilities, had the strange
conviction that he had only to write and ask anybody,
from Mr. Asquith downwards, for employment in the highest
offices in order to obtain it. Young Perch—who
used to protest, “Well, but I’ve got
my work, Mother”—was in fact a horticulturist
of very fair reputation. He specialised in sweet
peas and roses; and Sabre, in the early days of his
intimacy with the Rod, Pole or Perch household, was
surprised at the livelihood that could apparently be
made by the disposal of seeds, blooms and cuttings.
“Fred’s getting quite famous with his
sweet peas,” Sabre once said to Mrs. Perch.
“I’ve been reading an illustrated interview
with him in The Country House.”
Tides of glory into Mrs. Perch’s face.
“Ah, if only he hadn’t worn that dreadful
floppy hat of his, Mr. Sabre. It couldn’t
have happened on a more unfortunate day. I fully
intended to see how he looked before the photographs
were taken and of course it so happened I was turning
a servant out of the house and couldn’t attend
to it. That dreadful floppy hat doesn’t
suit him. It never did suit him. But he will
wear it. It’s no good my saying anything
to him.”
This was an opinion that old Mrs. Perch was constantly
reiterating. Young Perch was equally given to
declaring, “I can’t do anything with my
Mother, you know.” And yet it was Sabre’s
observation that each life was entirely guided and
administered by the other. Young Perch once told
Sabre he had never slept a night away from his mother
since he was seventeen, and he was never absent from
her half a day but she was at the window watching
for his return.
Sabre was extraordinarily attracted by the devotion
between the pair. Their interests, their habits,
their thoughts were as widely sundered as their years,
yet each was wholly and completely bound up in the
other. When Sabre sat and talked with Young Perch
of an evening, old Mrs. Perch would sit with them,
next her son, in an armchair asleep. At intervals
she would start awake and say querulously, “Now
I suppose I must be driven off to bed.”
Young Perch, not pausing in what he might be saying,
would stretch a hand and lay it on his mother’s.
Mrs. Perch, as though Freddie’s hand touched
away enormous weariness and care, would sigh restfully
and sleep again. It gave Sabre extraordinary
sensations.
* * * *
*
If he had been asked to name his particular friends
these were the friends he would have named. He
saw them constantly. Infrequently he saw another.
Quite suddenly she came back into his life.
Nona returned into his life.
NONA
