‘Fortune makes quick despatch, and in a day
May strip you bare as beggary itself.’
‘Is this thing true, George?’
‘What thing?’ asks Crosby.
‘Oh, you know—you know. You’—turning her cold eyes on him with actual
fury in their depths—‘must have known it all along.’
‘My dear Mrs. Prior, if you would only explain!’
Mrs. Prior motions him to a seat. She is already dressed for dinner,
though it is barely seven o’clock. She had, however, determined—after a
stormy interview with Josephine on their return from the Rectory—on
seeing Wyndham at once, and demanding an explanation with regard to
‘that creature,’ as she called her. Wyndham, it seemed, however, had not
yet returned. ‘Gone to see her, no doubt,’ cried Mrs. Prior, with
ever-rising wrath; and thus foiled in her efforts to see him, she had
sent for her host, who, of course, being a bosom friend of Wyndham’s,
and living down here, must have known all about it from the first.
‘Do you think I need?’ says she, with a touch of scorn. ‘Are you going
to tell me deliberately that you do not know what this—woman—is to
Paul?’
‘His tenant,’ says Crosby calmly. ‘What’s the matter with that? Lots of
fellows have tenants.’
‘That is quite true. It is also true that “lots of fellows”’—she draws
in her breath as if suffocating—‘have——’
‘Oh, come now!’ says Crosby.
‘You would have me mince matters,’ says she in her low, cold voice, that
is now vibrating with anger. ‘It is inadmissible, of course, to mention
things of this sort. But I have my poor girl’s interest at stake, and I
dare to go far—for her. This arrangement of Paul’s down here, close to
you’—she gives him a sudden quick glance—‘in the very midst of us, as it
were, is a direct insult.’
‘So it certainly would be, if matters were as you suppose. I am
confident, however, that they are not. I have Paul’s word for it.’
‘Oh, a man’s word on such an occasion as this!’
‘Well, I suppose a man’s word, if you know the man, is as good on one
occasion as another,’ says Crosby. ‘And why should he lie to me about
it? I have no interest in his tenants. If, as you seem to fancy, she
is——’
‘Oh, hush!’ says Mrs. Prior, making an entreating gesture; ‘don’t speak
so loud. That poor child of mine—that poor, poor child—is
there’—pointing to the door on her left—‘and if she heard this, it would
almost kill her, I think.’ Mrs. Prior throws a little tragedy into her
pale blue eyes. ‘Her heart is deeply concerned—is filled, indeed, with
Paul! As you know, George, for years this engagement has been thought
of.’
‘Engagement?’
‘Between’—a little impatiently, but solemnly—‘Paul and——’ She stops as
if heart-broken, and covers her face with her handkerchief.
‘Virginia,’ is on the tip of Crosby’s tongue, but by a noble effort he
swallows it.
‘My unhappy Josephine,’ says Mrs. Prior, having commanded her grief.
‘For myself, I cannot see what the end of this thing will be.’
‘It’s an unlucky name beyond doubt,’ says Crosby, growing historical. ‘I
don’t think I’d christen another—h’m—I mean, I don’t think it is a good
name to call a girl by, don’t you know; but I fail to see where the
unhappiness comes in this time.’
‘Don’t you? Do you imagine my poor child would wed a man with such
disgraceful antecedents? I had thought of the marriage for next year;
but now! And dear Shangarry has so set his heart on a union between my
girl and Paul. Only last month he was speaking to me about it. It will
be a horrible blow to the poor old man. Indeed, I shouldn’t wonder if he
disinherited Paul on account of it.’
Here she looks steadily, meaningly at Crosby. It is a challenge. Crosby
quite understands that he is to convey to Wyndham that he is to give up
his tenant, or else Mrs. Prior will declare war upon him, and prejudice
the old man, his uncle, against him.
‘On account of what?’ asks he, unmoved. ‘Because he has a tenant in his
cottage, or because——’
‘Oh, tenant!’ Mrs. Prior makes a swift movement of her white and
beautiful hands.
‘Or, because——’
She interrupts him again, as he has expected. He has no desire whatever
to go on; to say to her, ‘because he will probably refuse to marry your
daughter,’ would be a little too broad. He has risked the beginning of
his speech with a hope of frightening her into some sort of propriety;
but he has failed.
‘There will be a scandal,’ says she, with determination.
‘Not unless somebody insists upon one.’ Crosby crosses one leg over the
other with a judicial air. ‘And scandals are so very vulgar.’
‘Quite the most vulgar things one knows; but they do occur, for all
that. And if Shangarry once knew that Paul so much as wavered in his
allegiance to Josephine, he would be very hard to manage.’
‘But has it, then, gone so far as that?’
‘Far! What can be farther? A girl, a young girl, and a—well, I dare say
there are some who would call her beautiful—kept in seclusion, called,
for decency’s sake, his tenant——’
‘Oh, that!’ says Crosby; ‘I wasn’t alluding to that. I mean, has this
affair between your daughter and Wyndham gone so very far? Is this
engagement you hint at a thing accomplished? Has it been settled?’ He
leans towards her in a strictly confidential manner. ‘Any words said?’
‘Oh, words! What are words?’ says Mrs. Prior. ‘Deeds count, not words.
And all our world knows how attentive he has been to my poor child for
years.’
This is a slip, and she is at once conscious of it.
‘Years! Bad sign,’ says Crosby, stroking his chin.
‘I don’t know what you mean by that’—irritably, and with a view to
retrieving her position. ‘The longer the time, the greater the
injustice—the injury—afterwards. I feel that my poor darling is quite
compromised over this affair. I need hardly tell you, George, who know
her, and how attractive she is’—Crosby nods feelingly, and, I hope,
offers up a prayer for pardon—‘that she has refused many and many a
magnificent offer because she believed herself pledged surely, if
unspokenly, to her cousin. Her great attachment to him’—all at once
Crosby sees Josephine’s calm, calculating eyes and passionless
manner—‘has been, I now begin to fear, the misfortune of her life,
because certainly—yes, certainly—he led her to believe all along that he
meant to make her his wife.’
‘Well, perhaps he does,’ says Crosby.
‘What! And do you imagine I would submit to—to—that establishment,
whilst my daughter——’ She buries her face in her handkerchief.
‘Shangarry will be so grieved,’ says she.
This is a second threat, meant to be conveyed to Wyndham. Crosby
represses an inclination to laugh. After all, she has chosen, poor
woman! about the worst man in Europe for her ambassador. To him, Mrs.
Prior’s indignation is as clear as day. With his clear common-sense he
thus reads her: She has doubts about Wyndham’s relations with his pretty
tenant, but she has deliberately set herself to believe the worst. The
worst to her, however, would not be the immoral attitude of the case,
but the dread that the girl would inveigle Wyndham into a marriage with
her, and so spoil her daughter’s chance. The girl, as she saw her
through the spreading branches, was very beautiful, and Josephine—well,
there was a time when she was younger, fresher.
‘I really think, Mrs. Prior, you are making a mountain out of a
mole-hill,’ says he presently. ‘I assure you I think this young
lady, now living in the Cottage, is nothing more or less than
Wyndham’s tenant. Why make a fuss about it? I am sure if you ask
Wyndham——By-the-by, why don’t you ask him?’
‘Because he refuses me the opportunity,’ says Mrs. Prior. ‘I sent for
him; he was not to be found. He purposely avoids me this evening. But he
shall not do so to-morrow. I am his aunt; I have every right to speak to
him on this disgraceful subject.’
‘Not disgraceful, I trust,’ says Crosby, who is devoutly thanking his
stars that Mrs. Prior is not his aunt.
‘Utterly disgraceful, when I think of how he has behaved to my poor
trusting girl——’
‘Still,’ says Crosby thoughtfully, ‘you tell me there were no words
said.’
‘No actual words.’
‘Ah, the others are so useless,’ says Crosby.
Mrs. Prior lifts her eyes to his for a moment. Real emotion shines in
them; and all at once Crosby is conscious of a sense of shame. Poor
soul! however mistaken, however contemptible her trouble, still it is
trouble, and therefore worthy of consideration.
‘I can see you are not on my side,’ says she at last. ‘You have no
sympathy with my grief, and yet you might have. I have had many griefs
in my time, George, but this is the worst of all. To have my daughter
thus treated! Of course, after this I could not—I really believe I could
not sanction her marriage with Paul.’ She pauses, and delicately dabs
her handkerchief into her eyes. Her hopes of a marriage between her
daughter and Wyndham have been at such a low ebb for a long time that
there is scarcely any harm in declaring now her determination not to wed
her daughter to her cousin at any price. If things should take a turn
for the better, if her threats about informing Shangarry should take
effect, she can easily get out of her present attitude. ‘Yes, such
troubles!’ She dabs her eyes again. ‘First my sister’s terrible marriage
with a perfectly impossible person—you know all about that, George—poor
dear Eleanor; and then my father’s will, leaving everything to Eleanor
and her children, though he had so often excommunicated her, as it were.
And the trouble with that will! The searching here and there for
Eleanor—poor Eleanor; such awful trouble—advertisements, and private
inquiry people, and all the rest. As you know, it is only quite lately
that, certain information of her death without issue having come to
hand, I have been enabled to live.’
‘Yes—yes, I know,’ says Crosby. He is on his very best behaviour now.
‘You have always appreciated my sweet girl at her proper worth, at all
events,’ says Mrs. Prior, dabbing her eyes for the last time, and
emerging from behind her handkerchief with wonderfully pale lids.
‘I have—I have indeed!’ exclaims Crosby warmly. Anything to pacify her!
His manner is so warm, so ardent, that Mrs. Prior pauses, and her mind
starts on another track. With rapidity her thoughts fly back and then
forward. Crosby is quite as good a match as Paul, if one excludes the
title. And perhaps—who knows?
‘George,’ says she softly, but with emotion, ‘perhaps you think me hard.
But a mother—and that dreadful girl lives there alone in his house; and
he visits her; and can you still, from your heart, tell me that she——’
She breaks off, as if quite overcome, and unable to go on.
‘I can tell you this, at all events,’ says Crosby, ‘that she does not
live alone. Wyndham has engaged a lady to be a companion to her.’
‘Paul!’ Mrs. Prior turns her eyes, moist with her late emotion, on
him—eyes now full of wrath. ‘Is she an imbecile, then, this girl? Must
Paul engage a keeper for her? What absurd throwing of dust in the eyes
of the world!’
‘A companion, I said.’
She throws him a little contemptuous glance, and, with agitation, begins
to pace up and down the room. ‘A nice companion! They are well met, no
doubt,’ cries she suddenly, ‘this “companion” and her charge. I tell
you, George, I shall get at the root of this.’
‘I don’t think you will have to go very deep,’ says Crosby.
‘You think it is so much on the surface as that? I don’t. And I shall
take measures; I shall know what to do.’
There is something so determined in her air as she says this, that
Crosby looks at her with some consideration. What is she going to do?
But she is looking down upon the carpet, and is evidently thinking. Yes,
she knows what she will do. She will go to that girl to-morrow, and tell
her plainly what her position is. She will so speak and so argue, that
if the girl is, as George Crosby pretends to suppose, a virtuous girl,
she will frighten her out of her present position. And if she is what
Mrs. Prior, with horrible hope, determines she is, well, then, no harm
will be done, but the ‘little establishment,’ as she calls it, will
infallibly be broken up. There is another thought, however. Crosby just
now had spoken almost tenderly of Josephine. If there is the smallest
chance of Crosby’s being attracted by her, Mrs. Prior feels that she
could stay proceedings with regard to Paul with a most willing hand. If
not? Any way, there is a whole evening to think it over.
‘What do you think of doing?’ asks Crosby at this moment, a little
anxiously. To attack Wyndham before them all, downstairs?... That would
be abominable! And yet he would hardly put it beyond her.
‘Ah, that lies in the future,’ says she. She rises languidly from the
chair into which she has sunk, and smiles at him. ‘I am afraid I am
keeping you from your other guests.’
‘Not at all—not at all,’ says Crosby amiably. ‘You are keeping me only
from my man and my tie, and the rest of it.’
He bows himself hurriedly, but amiably, out of the room.