Sea of Glass (Valancourt 20th Century Classics) by Dennis Parry Page B

‘Very well, Mother, I won’t tire you by chopping logic. In any case, if you take that line, we can hardly discuss the factual evidence in front of the boy.’ (I had gone down a bit from my status as legal adviser.) ‘I’ll come to see you again tomorrow.’
    ‘Not tomorrow, Cedric,’ said Mrs. Ellison faintly.
    ‘Tomorrow,’ he repeated firmly. ‘Alone.’
    He went out, not saying goodbye. I was terribly at a loss, but Mrs. Ellison braced herself in a final effort to rescue me.
    ‘Thank you, David, for your good advice. You’ll help a lot more silly old women in your time.’
    Her courtesy moved me. I knew that I wanted really and effectively to help her.
    ‘Don’t do it,’ I said, the words coming out almost of themselves.
    ‘Don’t do what?’ asked Mrs. Ellison, surprised through her fatigue.
    ‘Whatever he wants you to do.’
    She did not reply for so long that I feared she must think me daft or impertinent. But at length, with a jump in thought as wide as my own, she said:
    ‘If you have sons, David, never insist on making business men out of them. Either it doesn’t succeed . . . or it succeeds too well.’ She bent her head forward which at first I took as a sign of dismissal. In the next second, however, I realized that she could no longer hold it upright; she was on the verge of collapse. I rushed to the door and shouted, ‘Nurse! Nurse!’
    Fillis appeared with a creditable promptness. She took one look at Mrs. Ellison, then said:
    ‘Stay here and watch that she doesn’t fall out of that chair.’
    I was terrified that the poor old lady would die during her absence. But she was gone for less than a minute. The hypodermic which she carried must have been kept perpetually charged against emergencies. This was clearly one, for Nurse Fillis ripped up the buttons on the long sleeve of her patient’s dress, sending them flying to all quarters.
    The injection took effect quickly. Mrs. Ellison sat up looking almost normal. Nurse Fillis said soothingly:
    ‘Now in just a moment we’re going to get you to bed.’
    That she refrained from saying ‘beddy-byes’ emphasized the gravity of the crisis. When she took Mrs. Ellison’s arm on one side and draped it over her shoulder, I naturally suggested that I should give support on the other. Probably she knew exactly how to manage such operations and I should only have hindered her. At any rate she waved me aside.
    I was left with a great deal of new-won knowledge to digest. Automatically I sat down at the little desk, in the place which Mrs. Ellison had vacated. Twenty minutes later I was still there, pondering uneasily, when Nurse Fillis came back.
    ‘What are you doing?’ she said sharply.
    ‘Nothing particular.’
    ‘You’ve no right to be in here.’
    ‘Why on earth not?’
    ‘Mrs. Ellison keeps a lot of extremely valuable and private papers in this room.’
    It was too much. I thought again of my aunt. She might have allowed me to be bamboozled and patronized within reason by Cedric Ellison, for she had strong ideas about the subjection of the young to their elders, but she would not easily have forgiven me for submitting to Nurse Fillis’s cold-blooded insult.
    For once my own sentiments agreed. Unlike most people, I have always been more exasperated by blank rudeness than covert sneers. Rage gave me an instinct for the place to strike.
    ‘Nurse,’ I said, ‘I’d like to ask you something. Have you had so many friends in your life that you can afford to make enemies quite gratuitously?’
    Her eyes dropped miserably. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I only spoke like that because I’m on edge.’
    Then it was my turn, of course, to feel that I must make amends.
    ‘That’s not surprising. It shook me up. I hope Mrs. Ellison’s better now?’
    ‘Yes. She’ll be all right.’
    ‘Was she actually in danger?’
    ‘There’s always danger in her condition . . . if she gets overexcited.’
    I said: ‘She was worried, and a bit