Memories,feelings,which she had thought quite dead,revived within her,painful,sullen,tenacious.Mechanically she closed drawer after drawer,went to her bed,lay on it,and buried her face in the pillows.She did not cry.What was the use of that?
When she got off her bed to go down to lunch she felt as if only one thing could do her good,and that was to have Val home.He--her eldest boy--who was to go to Oxford next month at James'expense,was at Littlehampton taking his final gallops with his trainer for Smalls,as he would have phrased it following his father's diction.She caused a telegram to be sent to him.
"I must see about his clothes,"she said to Imogen;"I can't have him going up to Oxford all anyhow.Those boys are so particular.""Val's got heaps of things,"Imogen answered.
"I know;but they want overhauling.I hope he'll come.""He'll come like a shot,Mother.But he'll probably skew his Exam.""I can't help that,"said Winifred."I want him."With an innocent shrewd look at her mother's face,Imogen kept silence.It was father,of course!Val did come 'like a shot'at six o'clock.
Imagine a cross between a pickle and a Forsyte and you have young Publius Valerius Dartie.A youth so named could hardly turn out otherwise.When he was born,Winifred,in the heyday of spirits,and the craving for distinction,had determined that her children should have names such as no others had ever had.(It was a mercy--she felt now--that she had just not named Imogen Thisbe.)But it was to George Forsyte,always a wag,that Val's christening was due.It so happened that Dartie dining with him,a week after the birth of his son and heir,had mentioned this aspiration of Winifred's.
"Call him Cato,"said George,"it'll be damned piquant!"He had just won a tenner on a horse of that name.
"Cato!"Dartie had replied--they were a little 'on'as the phrase was even in those days--"it's not a Christian name.""Halo you!"George called to a waiter in knee breeches."Bring me the Encyc'pedia Brit.from the Library,letter C."The waiter brought it.