‘To hear an open scandal is a curse;
But not to find an answer is a worse.’
Mrs. Prior, thus forcibly ejected (ejections are the vogue in Ireland),
commences her return journey to Crosby Park, smarting considerably under
her wrongs and the big umbrella she is holding over her head. She has
gone but a little way, however, when, on suddenly turning a corner, she
finds herself face to face with Wyndham.
He has evidently been walking in a great hurry, but as he sees her he
comes to a dead stop. All his worst fears are at once realized. The fact
is that Crosby had missed Mrs. Prior at luncheon hour—a most unusual
thing, by the way, for her to be absent, for she dearly loved a meal—and
he had asked Miss Prior where she was. Miss Prior had said she did not
know—hadn’t the faintest notion—perhaps gone for a prowl and forgotten
her way home. Crosby somehow had felt that the fair Josephine was lying
openly and freely, and had at once given a hint to Wyndham of Mrs.
Prior’s conversation with him on the previous night, even suggesting
that Mrs. Prior’s unusual absence from luncheon might have some
connection with the Cottage. The result of all of which is that Mrs.
Prior now finds herself looking into her nephew’s eyes and wondering
rather vaguely what the next move is going to be.
His eyes are distinctly unpleasant. They had been anxious—horribly
anxious—when first she saw them; but now they seem alive with active
rage.
‘Where have you been?’ asks he immediately, his face set and white.
Crosby, then, had been quite right in his suggestion.
‘I have been doing my duty,’ returns Mrs. Prior, who has pulled herself
together. Her tone is stern and uncompromising.
‘You have been at the Cottage?’
‘You have guessed quite correctly.’
‘You have seen that poor girl, then, and——’
‘I have seen that most wretched girl, and told her my opinion of her.’
Wyndham makes a sharp ejaculation. ‘You spoke to her, insulted her, that
poor child?’ He feels that reproach is no longer possible to him. What
has she said? What, indeed, has she left unsaid? Great heavens, what
monsters some women can be!
‘I explained to her her position. Not that she needed explanation, in
spite of all her extremely clever efforts at an innocent bearing. I
passed over that, however, and told her—hoping that perhaps she had some
real feeling for you, though I understand that class of person never has
any honest feeling—that beyond all doubt Lord Shangarry would disinherit
you if he heard of your connection with her.’ She pauses here. This is
her trump card, and she looks straight at Paul as she plays it.
It proves valueless. He passes it over as though it were of no
consequence whatever.
‘I don’t know what to say to you,’ says he, struggling with his
passionate rage, and grief, and shame. ‘I hardly know how to condemn you
strongly enough. I wish to God you were not a woman, and then I should
know what to do. This girl you have so insulted is a girl as good and
pure as the best girl you have ever met, and yet you have gone down
there’—pointing in the direction of the Cottage—‘and deliberately hurt
and wounded her. I wonder you had the courage to do it. Are you’—growing
now furious—‘a fool that you couldn’t see how sweet and gentle and
innocent she is?’
‘Is it your intercourse with this sweet and gentle and innocent girl
that has made you so extremely rude?’ asks his aunt in her low,
well-bred voice. ‘If so, I consider I have done an extra duty by my
visit to her. It may have results. Your disinheritance by Shangarry, for
example, is sure to have an effect upon her. I am afraid, after all, it
is you who are the fool. In the meantime, Paul, I can quite see that
your infatuation for an extremely ordinary sort of girl has blinded you
to her defects. Some of these people, I am told, quite study our manners
nowadays; but she lacks distinction of any sort. That you happen to be
in love with her at present of course prevents your seeing these
faults.’
‘You seem so remarkably well up in the affair,’ says Wyndham, who could
now have cheerfully strangled her, ‘that I suppose it will be quite
superfluous to tell you that love has no voice in the matter. I am not
in love with her, and she most positively is not in love with me.’
Mrs. Prior makes a contemptuous movement of her thin shoulders.
‘So very old,’ says she. ‘Do you suppose, my dear Paul, with the stake
you have in view, that I expected you to say the truth—to tell me that
you had fallen violently in love with this little paltry creature, who
has come out of no one knows where, except yourself, to go back to no
one knows where when you are tired of her?’
‘Look here,’ says Wyndham, driven beyond all courtesy by some feeling
that he can hardly explain, ‘I think you have the worst mind of any
woman I have ever met. I see now that it is useless to try to convince
you; but remember—remember always’—he makes a distinct pause, as if on
purpose, as if to fasten the words on her mind—‘what I say to you
now—that anyone who calls Ella Moore anything less than the best woman
on earth—lies!’
‘Your infatuation has gone deep,’ says Mrs. Prior. ‘Few men would speak
so strongly in favour of the virtue of their—friends.’
‘I understand your hideous hint,’ says Wyndham, who has now grown cold
and collected. ‘You are a woman, and it is hard to tell a woman that she
lies. But if you were a man, I shouldn’t hesitate about it.’
‘As I tell you, she has not improved your manners,’ says Mrs. Prior,
with a bitter smile. She has not dreamt the affair would take this turn.
She has believed that Paul, through dread of Shangarry’s displeasure,
would at the most have made light of the matter, have parried the
attack, and perhaps have sworn fresh allegiance to Josephine on the head
of it. That he should defend this ‘creature’ and defy her, his aunt,
because of her—— The situation has become strained beyond bearing.
‘If you do not love her, and she does not love you, and is not even your
friend,’ says she sneeringly, ‘what is she to you?’
‘My tenant—neither more nor less.’
‘You mean to tell me, on your honour, that she pays you rent?’
‘Certainly she does.’
‘She is a _bonâ-fide_ tenant, nothing more? Then, if so, why all this
mystery? Why did you give me to understand weeks ago that she was a
man?’
‘You understood that for yourself. And with regard to the mystery, it
seems that she is desirous of privacy.’
‘How very modest, and what an extraordinary tenant to pick up! May I ask
where you first heard of her? By advertisement?’
‘No.’
‘How, then?’
For a moment Wyndham hesitates. Hesitation is supposed to lead to ruin,
but Wyndham comes out of it sound in wind and limb. His mind had
suffered a shock as it fell back upon that tragic scene in the
Professor’s room, but recovered from it almost immediately.
‘You may have heard of Professor Hennessy,’ says he—‘a very
distinguished man. He told me of her just before his death.
Now’—sarcastically—‘have I answered enough of your questions? Is your
conscience quite satisfied as to your duty?’
‘It is open to anyone to make light of sacred subjects,’ said Mrs.
Prior, with dignity. ‘Duty to me is the one sacred thing in life. I have
taken this matter in hand, and, in spite of all you have said, Paul, I
may as well warn you that I shall not take your word for it, but shall
sift it steadily to the bottom. I consider that my duty to both you and
to my daughter.’
‘To Josephine?’
‘Yes, to Josephine. Are you prepared to say that you have no duty
towards her?’
‘Not that I am aware of.’
‘After all these years? After all Shangarry has hinted and said? After
all the notoriety, the talk, the gossip, of our world? That a man should
pay pointed attentions to a girl for two years—should come and go, be
received at her mother’s house, and escort her to balls and concerts and
to theatres—is all that to go for nothing? Is my poor girl to be cast
aside now as though nothing had occurred——’
‘If you are alluding to Josephine,’ says Wyndham coldly and calmly, ‘I
can’t see that anything has occurred to cause her annoyance of any kind.
I am afraid you are misleading yourself. You ought to speak to your
daughter, and she, no doubt, will post you up about it. I, for my part,
can assure you that there is nothing between us, nor has there ever
been. Your daughter is as indifferent to me as’—emphatically—‘I am to
her.’
He feels abominably rude as he says this, but he feels, too, the
necessity for saying it. And, after all, the onus of the rudeness lies
with her. Mrs. Prior is silent for a moment, more from anger than from
inability to speak; then she breaks out:
‘I shall write to Shangarry.’
‘You can write,’ says Wyndham quietly, ‘to anyone on earth you like.’
‘You distinctly, then, decline to carry out your engagement to my
daughter?’
‘My dear aunt, surely you exaggerate? When was there any engagement?’
‘It was the same thing. You paid her great attention, and Shangarry has
set his heart on it.’
‘I am sorry for Lord Shangarry.’
‘You refuse, then?’
‘Distinctly,’ says Wyndham. He lifts his hat and hurries past her. She
waits a little, watching him until he disappears round the corner that
will lead him to the Cottage.