CHAPTER XI.

      “How long did you plan to hide in those ridiculous shrubberies, my love?” Mina said. She stared right at him, as if she could see through the thicket.

      Trying not to catch himself on a thorn, Quincey slowly emerged from the hedges. “I saw father’s motorcar. I was waiting for him to leave,” he replied, brushing dirt off his coat. “How did you know I was here?”

      “I am your mother, foolish boy,” Mina said, laughing. She gave him a warm embrace, then pulled away to take another look at him. “It’s been so long. Let me have a proper look at you. I’ve missed you.”

      “I’ve missed you, too, Mother…” Quincey paused. He saw that she had been crying. “What’s wrong? What happened?”

      “You needn’t trouble yourself about me.” She plucked leaves out of his hair.

      “Is it Father? Has he been drinking again?”

      “Please, Quincey, that is very disrespectful.”

      “Sorry, Mum.”

      “Come inside. It is good to see you, my handsome young man. You look as if you haven’t had a decent meal in weeks.”

      In the three years in which Quincey had been away, he had gone all over the United Kingdom and Ireland with the traveling show, and then in the last year, he had been trapped in Paris. He had experienced completely opposite worlds.

      Entering the home in which he had grown up was a surreal experience. The familiar foyer made him feel as if time had stood still. There was the banister on the grand staircase that he used to love to slide down as a child, against his father’s warnings that he would be hurt. Quincey peered into the drawing room. Everything was exactly as he had last seen it, almost as if he had never left. There was his mother’s favorite tea set, with the morning newspapers stacked close by. Quincey recognized his father’s crystal decanter half filled with his preferred Scotch whisky. Quincey remembered the harsh scolding he had received when, as a child, he broke the original decanter. He wondered if his father was more upset about the loss of an expensive crystal or of the whisky it held.

      While he was staring at the room, Mina crossed to the table and picked up one of the newspapers that lay open. Quincey thought he saw her hand tremble as she folded the newspaper and tucked it under her arm.

      “Mother, are you sure you’re all right?”

      “I’m fine, Quincey,” Mina said, offering a meek smile. “Now, why don’t you clean yourself up, and I’ll have the cook make a plate for you.”

      After the rigors of traveling nonstop from Paris, Quincey felt renewed as he dressed in clean clothes. He glanced around his old room. It was the bedroom of a young boy. He now felt out of place within it.

      He passed the study and saw his mother lost in thought, staring again at that old photograph of herself and her childhood friend Lucy, who had passed away from disease at about the same age he was now. How awful it must be to lose one’s life just as it was beginning. He always knew when his mother was troubled, for she always turned to that photograph. It was as if she were still turning to her dead friend for guidance.

      As he stared at his mother, Quincey was struck by the realization that, just as this house had hardly changed at all, his mother looked exactly the same as she had three years earlier. He doubted the years would have been as kind to his sour, pickled father. He recalled a day a few years back when he had discovered that some of the blokes from school had made inappropriate remarks regarding his mother’s youthful appearance and how he had been so outraged that he had taken on all three boys at once and given them all a beating. Despite earning himself a temporary suspension from school, Quincey was proud of his chivalry. He remembered how he and his mother used to trick strangers into believing they were brother and sister. He supposed one day she would grow old like his father but was glad that day was not yet. After being away for so long, if he had returned to find his mother aged and sickly, the guilt would have been far too great to bear, and the rage toward his father for chasing him away these last years would have been volcanic.

      Quincey didn’t realize how hungry he was until he started eating. He had not had a good kipper since leaving home. As soon as he polished off the plateful, Mary, the housemaid, appeared to clear away the dishes.

      “Now that you’ve have had a proper meal,” said Mina, “would you be good enough to explain why, after being away all this time, you choose to come now in the midst of a university term?”

      “Promise you will not be angry?”

      “You know I would never make such a promise.”

      “All too well. I suppose there is no easy way to say this.” He took a deep breath and blurted out, “I have met someone. Someone wonderful.”

      Mina opened her mouth to speak, but seemed dumbfounded. Quincey was about to continue when Mary returned with freshly brewed tea and Garibaldi biscuits, Quincey’s favorite.

      The instant Mary left, Mina said, “So tell me, who is the fortunate young lady?”

      “Young lady?”

      “You said you met ‘someone wonderful’?”

      “I did, but…,” he said. “Mother, prepare yourself. I had a meeting with Basarab.”

      “Who?”

      “Have you not heard of him? He is a brilliant man, Mother. The toast of all Paris. The greatest Shakespearean actor in the world.”

      “Oh, Quincey, not this again.”

      “Basarab advised me to stop following my father’s broken dreams and to follow my own before I grow old.”

      “A tad presumptuous to assume he would know better than your parents what’s best for you.”

      “I believe he saw potential in me.”

      “So do your father and I. What about your law degree?”

      “Basarab’s encouragement has convinced me to leave the Sorbonne and seek an acting apprenticeship at the Lyceum.”

      “I do not know what to say, Quincey.